by Joanna Rees
‘Eighteen.’
‘Well, keep that pretty nose of yours clean, Verity.’
‘I will. I promise.’
‘I don’t know where you’re from, and I don’t want to know, but you won’t have seen the nightlife around these parts, I’m guessing. There’s all types that come in here. They want to dance and get drunk. You have to keep your wits about you, and don’t let anyone take advantage of you.’
She thought of Clement, and of the million ways in which he’d taken advantage of her all her life.
‘I can look after myself.’
‘Well,’ Wisey squinted at her as she crushed the cigarette stub into the ashtray on the dressing table, ‘we’ll see about that.’
Now Jerome stuck his head around the door, while putting on a brown trilby. He threw up some keys in the air and caught them. ‘I’m off, if you still want a lift, Wisey,’ he said.
‘I can’t,’ Wisey said with a sigh. ‘I still have to return these costumes to Percy. He had to leave, and I promised I’d drop them into his workshop.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Vita offered. She liked Percy, and the idea of visiting his workshop sounded intriguing.
‘Oh, well, if you don’t mind,’ Wisey said. ‘Only my mother is in hospital. I have to see her, and Jerome needs to get over to Hammersmith.’
‘Of course, it’d be my pleasure,’ Vita replied, pleased to have found a purpose and to be able, at least in part, to pay these people back.
‘Well, there’s a turn-up,’ Wisey said to Jerome, as she handed over the pile of costumes. ‘A nice girl, for once.’
17
Percy’s Chaos
In the tiny cobbled lane in the maze of streets around Covent Garden, Vita looked up at the wooden door and then back at the piece of paper that Wisey had written on.
Next door, the wooden workshop doors were open and a tanner was bashing a long animal skin. He wolf-whistled at Vita, who hardly noticed, her attention drawn instead to two Italian men who were arguing. A boy on a bicycle drew up next to them, long loaves of bread sticking out of the top of his basket, and Vita’s stomach growled. From an open window above came the sound of a violin being tuned and she saw the sign for an instrument repair shop.
She dropped her carpet bag, then shifted the costumes over her arm and knocked on the glass panel in the wooden door.
She could hear music coming from inside and then Percy’s voice. ‘It’s open. Come in.’
With difficulty she turned the handle and opened the door, ducking to go through the smaller doorway in the big wooden entrance.
‘Aha, it’s you. The new girl,’ Percy said, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘Welcome to the chaos.’
Vita stood on the threshold, taking in the amazing scene before her. There had been nothing from the outside to suggest what might lie behind the wooden doors, but now she was quite astounded. Percy’s ‘chaos’ was actually a treasure trove.
The room had a high ceiling, a skylight illuminating a high wooden workbench in a horseshoe shape below. The brick walls were painted white, but on one side of the room they weren’t visible as they were entirely covered with hanging rails, from which hung every conceivable colour of costume. At one end there were a few headless mannequins wearing enormous crinoline dresses, and on one of the benches there was a whole row of wooden heads covered in feathered headdresses and wigs.
‘Wisey said to bring these,’ Vita said, realizing that Percy was waiting for an explanation. ‘Sorry, it took me ages to get here.’
‘You came the long way. You know there’s an alley down the back that takes you almost to the Zip?’
He stood up from where he was sitting at the workbench and squeezed past a large ironing board to reach her, taking the costumes from her. Vita shook out her arms, relieved the weight was gone.
She had to suppress the urge to bury her face in the row of bright feather boas and soak up the delicious rose-scented colour of the costumes. She put her fingers out and ran them over the flowing white ostrich feather that lay on the top of a pile of fans on the bench.
‘Do you really make all of these?’ she asked.
‘Mostly. I help out all the theatres, and siphon the best pieces off to Wisey for the girls at the Zip. But don’t tell anyone that. Those ones you’ve brought are for the girls at the Adelphi next week.’
‘It’s amazing. What you do, I mean. This is all—’
‘Don’t be too impressed. I usually have to cobble things together at home, or here in my studio – with never enough money, and with a deadline that’s usually already past.’
She smiled. Percy might not think this was exciting, but she did. She ran her hands over pieces of red silky fabric on the large wooden bench.
‘I’ve always dreamt of making something like this – of having someone to make it for . . . It’s something I’ve always wanted to learn,’ she said.
Even saying it out loud felt foolish. Where she came from, such lofty ideals would have been smacked down by her parents, who had dismissed every sign of creativity she’d ever shown. It was only Meg and Ruth, on the cutting-room floor of the mill, who had ever let her watch them at work; and John, who had occasionally helped her mix the dyes for the cotton. But she’d always been fascinated by the fabric that the mill produced, dreaming about the millions of uses for the bales of material that her father exported to America.
She was half-expecting Percy to mock her, as her father would have, but instead he smiled warmly.
‘So where are you from?’ he asked.
‘Nowhere.’
‘Nowhere?’ Percy said with a grin, before piercing the cloth with a pin. ‘I like it there. Great views.’
Vita laughed. ‘You don’t want to know about my past.’
‘Don’t I?’
‘No. I’ve left it behind. There, in the past.’ She felt empowered saying it like this. Like it might actually be truth.
‘Oh, I see. Nothing stays in nowhere. Got it.’
She laughed for the first time in weeks and, as her eyes met his, realized that he was just being kind.
‘I should go. I’ve got to find this place the girls told me about. Mrs Bell’s. Hopefully she’ll take me on. I cannot tell you how appalling my boarding house is.’
‘Ah, I see,’ Percy said. ‘Well, let me telephone her first. I’ll put in a word.’
‘Would you?’
‘Yes, but in return, I could do with an extra pair of hands, if you don’t mind helping. You’re not in any rush, are you?’
18
Mrs Bell’s Boarding House
In the front parlour of Mrs Bell’s boarding house, in the little street just off Tottenham Court Road, Vita spooned down a second helping of apple pie and custard, thinking this might be the most delicious thing she’d ever eaten. She couldn’t seem to get it into her mouth fast enough. It had been a very long time since she’d eaten a decent meal. After everything that had happened today, her spirits were immeasurably lifted and, having felt so weak after the fever, her appetite was now back with a vengeance.
Mrs Bell, whom the girls had described as formidable, was in reality terribly sweet, Vita thought. She had a buxom figure, her waist cinched in by her flowery apron, and neat grey curly hair, and glasses on a chain. She smelt of lavender.
‘Och, he’s a good boy, my Percy. A kind heart,’ Mrs Bell said in her thick Scottish brogue, after Vita had explained how he’d helped her out at the theatre and how she’d spent the afternoon with him in his studio. How he’d made her tea and put her to work unpicking some hems, and then ironing costumes for the players at the Shaftesbury Theatre. She reported how she’d been entranced by the steady stream of flamboyant theatre folk who’d come to the studio; and how, eventually, she’d left to come to Mrs Bell’s, leaving Percy to meet some friends. She’d decided to come straight here and never go back to Brunswick Square ever again.
‘Aye, steady on there, Miss,’ Mrs Bell said, ‘you’ll be giving yourself indigestion.�
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Vita put the spoon down with a clatter, remembering her manners, and Mrs Bell laughed softly and picked up her plate.
There were four small tables laid up with shabby, but ironed tablecloths. The walls were covered in candy-striped wallpaper and there were several framed photographs of the royal family, the largest of which was a portrait of the Prince of Wales, his eyes made to look a particularly intense aquamarine-blue. Next to the portrait was a large wooden clock with a brass pendulum, which ticked loudly. The whole place felt homely and solid and safe, and so unlike Mrs Jackson’s, it seemed as if that had all been a horrible dream.
‘It was so kind of you to give me that extra pudding. It was just divine.’
‘You don’t have to thank me like that. It’s not Holyrood Palace, dear. It’s only tea. It was always my James’s favourite pudding, too.’ Mrs Bell pulled at her gold chain, and a large pendant housing a photo of a soldier flopped out of the top of her apron. She held it in her fingers and kissed the image.
‘May I see?’ Vita asked.
Mrs Bell turned the pendant for Vita to look. A man in military uniform looked sternly out from the black-and-white image.
‘He looks so very smart. Is that Black Watch tartan or Stewart?’
‘Would you know the difference?’
‘Of course.’ Vita looked closer. She’d grown up knowing all about the difference between the warp and weft of fabrics like tartan. The patterns and their provenance had always intrigued her. ‘It looks like Hunting Stewart to me.’
‘Fancy you knowing that,’ Mrs Bell said, impressed. ‘His regiment was with the Ninth Royal Scots. He looked so very smart going off to war,’ she went on proudly, before taking Vita’s bowl over to the sideboard.
Vita watched now as a very fat, fluffy fawn-and-white cat with one eye scarpered through the door across the dark-green carpet towards her. It purred loudly, pressing against her legs.
‘Och, that’s Casper,’ Mrs Bell said. ‘He’s not usually fond of strangers, so I’d take that as a compliment.’
Vita smiled and reached down to stroke the cat, remembering with a stab of pain what had happened to Spot. How Clement had punished her for some minor indiscretion by drowning her beloved cat, and her litter of kittens, in a sack in the stream at the back of the mill. Anna had only been ten and it had broken her heart.
Don’t think about Clement, she told herself sternly. Just don’t.
‘Ouch!’ she exclaimed, feeling something sharp in the cat’s fur pricking her palm.
She picked up the cat and investigated the fluffy patch of fur. ‘Goodness. Look,’ she said, pulling out a dressmaking pin.
She handed it to Mrs Bell, who tutted, before taking the cat from Vita’s arms. ‘You’ve been in Percy’s room again, haven’t you, you naughty boy?’ she scolded, her voice full of affection. ‘You won’t believe the things Percy makes in there,’ she added to Vita. ‘All sorts of creations. But he’s terrible with those pins. Gets them everywhere. You should thank Miss Casey, Casper,’ she added, addressing the cat. ‘That would have given you a nasty wee shock, wouldn’t it, if you’d started licking yourself.’
Mrs Bell chuckled as she put the cat down. She jabbed the pin into the top of her apron.
‘There’s a bed in the attic, with the girls. It’ll be a week’s rent – in advance, on a Saturday. And I’m not having any fancy-man callers around. Understood?’
‘Oh, understood,’ Vita said. ‘Only, can you wait for the first rent? I’ve only just started at the club with the girls today.’
Mrs Bell shook her head. ‘Well, no, dearie. If you don’t have any money, I can’t give you the room.’
‘But I will have soon, I promise,’ Vita implored. The cat meowed and circled round her legs. Vita stared at Mrs Bell, knowing that she couldn’t bear it if she had to go back to that horrible place in Bloomsbury. ‘I’ll be no trouble, I promise – please let me stay.’
‘Well, Casper likes you, so this once I’ll bend the rules, but you’d better not let me down.’
19
Rudolph Valentino
Vita lay on the bed in the tiny attic room, watching a band of light pass from the high window across the apex to the chimney breast, where the shadows of the row of hanging stockings reared like the silhouette of a chorus line.
She stretched on the bed, then sat up and unbuckled her shoes, feeling the relief as she kicked them off and they fell on the floorboards with a thud. She knew she ought to get undressed, but as she lay back heavily on the salmon-pink satin eiderdown, feeling her body rise and fall in a gentle ricochet on the springy mattress, it felt like bliss.
Now that she was finally safe, she realized she was bone-tired. Possibly more tired than she’d ever been, but somehow in a completely different way. It was as if she’d been living with a high-pitched annoying noise in her head, and now it had suddenly gone and there was peace for the first time.
She sighed, putting her hands behind her head on the pillow and examining the other two beds across the room, where Jane and Betsy slept. The mirrored dressing table between them held an array of perfume bottles; and necklaces and hats were draped over the mirror, where a picture of Rudoph Valentino was pinned, a red-lipstick kiss on his cheek. The drawers below were slightly open, revealing colourful slips and blouses, and the cupboard door was draped in a silk dressing gown, with a hairnet on the Lloyd Loom chair.
She was still in a boarding house and it was hardly the Ritz, but the difference between this and her room at Mrs Jackson’s was so complete that she was reminded of the illustrated Dickens book she’d had as a child. She remembered the pop-up scenes, and it felt as if she’d stepped through the pages of her own story into an entirely new scene.
It had only been in her most wishful thinking that she would ever fall in with people like Nancy, Percy and the girls. That they might actually swoop her off the street and save her seemed like an act so utterly overwhelming, it felt religious. And not just save her – look after her. Wisey and Mrs Bell had already shown her more care and concern than her mother ever had.
But it had happened. She’d only been in this bed for a couple of minutes, and yet already she felt like she belonged to this world. To these girls. To this house. And that Vita Casey’s life, not Anna Darton’s, was the one she’d been destined for, all along.
She raised her legs, circled her feet and examined her slender ankles. Are you dancing feet? she wondered. Was it possible that she could find a way to stay? In her heart, it was a yes; but even so, she felt a thud of fear when she shut her eyes.
She couldn’t dance.
She’d got away with it so far, but what would happen when the girls and Mr Connelly found out? She took a long, deep breath, forcing herself to calm down. She’d survived today, on her wits alone, and look how far she’d come. Who knew what tomorrow might bring?
20
Casper Gets His Way
When she woke up, the room was bathed in silvery light seeping through a crack in the curtain. Vita sat bolt upright, realizing that someone had covered her with a woollen blanket, which smelt musty.
Betsy and Jane were both asleep, tucked up in their beds – at least she presumed it was those two. They seemed different without their make-up. Betsy had rags in her hair and alarge greasy smear of cold cream on her cheeks. Jane lay on her side, her hands bunched into fists, like she might fight off anyone who came near.
They must have made some noise when they’d come in, but Vita hadn’t heard them. She must have been in the deepest sleep.
She swung her legs out of bed, standing up gingerly as the bed springs creaked. She needed to get undressed, but she was going to have to find a lavatory first. She didn’t dare use the chamber pot and wake the girls, when they were so soundly asleep.
She crept down the wooden staircase from the attic to the top floor, groping along the dark, unfamiliar corridor and down another flight of stairs. On the first-floor landing she jumped when she saw Casper, the cat. H
e purred loudly, circling around her ankles.
‘Hello, you,’ she whispered, scared of displeasing the cat, which was somehow managing to usher her along the corridor towards the door at the end, his purr getting louder by the second.
A light was coming from underneath the door and she was relieved that she wasn’t the only one awake in the house. Perhaps this was Mrs Bell’s room. Or maybe this was where Emma and Jemima’s room was.
Casper meowed, nudging the door with his nose, clearly wanting to get in. He looked up plaintively at her with his one eye.
She knocked softly on the door, but there was no answer. The cat pawed at it, desperate to get in, and Vita turned the handle tentatively. ‘Sorry,’ she said, as she pushed ajar the door into the room, ‘the cat wanted to come in and—’
She poked her head around the door as the cat scuttled through the crack, but then stopped suddenly, taking in the scene, a deep blush pulsing fast from her toes to her hairline.
Percy was standing by the bed, his back to the door, kissing . . . a man . . . who was dressed only in trousers, with braces over a vest. Now the cat jumped on the bed, startling the lovers, who sprang apart. Percy whipped his head round and his eyes met Vita’s. His cheeks were flushed, his lips red. He looked different without his glasses. The other man hastily grabbed his shirt from the bed.
She was so stunned that she hadn’t thought to close the door, but now she jumped.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she gasped, wishing she’d never seen what she’d just seen. She closed the door quickly, screwing up her face and wanting to cry.
The door opened behind her.
‘Wait,’ Percy said in an urgent, hissed whisper. ‘Come in, and for God’s sake close the door.’
Vita did as she was told, pressing her hands and then her back against the painted wooden door, the brass handle sticking into her spine. She looked round the room, which was filled with racks of clothes, with a small bed pushed up against the chimney breast. A wine bottle and two glasses stood on the mantelpiece and next to the bed was a wooden table, which housed a sewing machine and a lamp.
