The Last Dance

by Fiona McIntosh

  ‘Well, this is how you can do it. I know families who would likely pay twice as much as you probably earn now, plus board and lodging, if you were prepared to teach their children at home beyond the three ‘Rs’, but definitely refining their reading, writing, arithmetic. Most of their daughters may never have to reckon figures if they marry into similar money but society is changing and the war, the Depression too, is putting formerly unheard of pressures on grander homes . . . especially on the women who make a lot of the household decisions. It’s important the next generation of women, now they have their right to vote, can back up their new freedoms with financial know-how. Women need to be independent, capable of not just running a house but understanding all of the financial implications as well as having an admiration of culture. You have the skills to help with that.’

  She nodded. ‘I’m impressed. I didn’t expect you to be so liberal,’ and in the close confines of the taxi she tried not to be dazzled by the slightly mocking delight in his grin.

  ‘By my attitude or by my suggestion? Here, let me write down the name of an agency. The woman who runs it is a friend of Fruity – and she’s very good at placement, from what I hear. I mention her only because I met her recently in passing. You never know – the work, change of scenery and mindset could suit you for a short time until you get clear about . . .’ he shrugged, ‘the way ahead and all that.’

  She watched him pull a fountain pen and tiny blank white card from his inside pocket, and with the intuitive balance of a circus performer, he seemed to be able to write effortlessly despite the bounce of their vehicle and the twists and bumps that came without warning.

  ‘There,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘That’s her agency. I don’t know the exact address but I know it’s almost directly opposite Victoria Station.’

  She couldn’t read it in the dark but she placed the card in her handbag. ‘Thank you. I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Do more than that. I’m urging that you go and see her. At least find out more.’ Half of his face was in shadow now and this image of him seemed appropriately mysterious. She was convinced that Rafe possessed secrets he shared with no one, not even his family.

  ‘I promise you I will seriously consider your suggestion,’ she replied and felt a sensation of warmth sizzle through her as he squeezed her wrist with a glad smile.

  ‘Good.’ He bent slightly to stare out of the window and get a fix on where they were. ‘Clapham already,’ he murmured, spying the Common, and she wondered if she were reading far too much into what sounded like disappointment in his tone.

  ‘If you take a left up here, please,’ she said to the driver. ‘And then the second right – it’s number twenty-six. Thank you.’

  Soon enough they were both standing on the pavement outside the elegant row of Victorian houses that clustered around a pretty green. The taxi purred loudly as she returned her gaze to him and he took a breath to speak.

  ‘So this is where you live, Stella?’ he said, regarding the Gothic-style house that suddenly felt far too large for her and her siblings, and yet she knew must seem tiny to him.

  ‘This is where I was raised.’ Where my parents died, she thought, and pushed it away. ‘Where my brother, Rory, and my sister, Carys, were born.’

  ‘Who looks after them?’

  ‘My aunt moved in for a while. She’s my father’s sister and they were close growing up in Wales. The arrangement can’t last, though. She has her own family – they live in St Albans, always threatening to move back to northern Wales.’

  He reached for her gloved hand. She thought he was going to shake it but he simply held it loosely, staring at it silently for a few heartbeats. ‘Please, go and see the agency. I will contact the owner and leave your name, just in case you do. And I’ll be asking her to ensure you are given the best possible placement and not too far away from London so you can visit your brother and sister regularly.’

  ‘What do you propose I do with them, while I’m looking after someone else’s children?’

  ‘Send them to St Albans with your aunt. I say this respectfully when I suggest that she’s surely better equipped to raise youngsters while you raise funds. Take a sabbatical from work and earn some good money and get some distance from grief. A change of scenery and new responsibilities will help you see life through fresh eyes.’

  He was standing in a halo of yellow light beneath the sodium street lamp, which washed out his colour and flattened his features but couldn’t erase the earnest expression. Stella stared at him, unsure of how to end this discussion. She didn’t want to commit yet, but she didn’t want to disappoint him either.

  Rafe ended her dilemma of how to respond by unexpectedly raising her hand to his lips and kissing the back of her gloved hand. She was unsure precisely what he was communicating, other than he felt some sort of deeper connection than their cursory hour or so together might suggest.

  ‘Goodnight, Stella. I hope we meet again.’

  He didn’t wait for her response but hopped nimbly back into the taxi. She raised a hand as she heard him say: ‘Thank you, driver, back over the river, please.’ But he didn’t look back at her and she was still staring at the empty space where the taxi had parked well after its departure, her hand remaining lifted in farewell.

  Finally Stella turned, deep in her thoughts as she closed the small gate behind her and walked up the short pathway to her house. Aunt Dil had left the porch light on for her but as she dug into her bag for her front door key, all she could feel was the warm memory of his kiss that had melted through the cotton of her glove and lingered now against her skin, marking her with his tender touch.

  3

  Theirs was a traditional Victorian upstairs-downstairs, semi-detached house with four bedrooms, a slate roof and minimal decoration; traditional in every sense other than her mother’s passion for colour, which stretched to painting the exterior. The rest of their row was conventional red brick but the Myles family of Clapham had opted for the notoriety of painting their house a pale yellow, like the Breton cream of memory from her mother’s childhood.

  ‘We like colour in France,’ Didi had explained with a soft outward sigh of disdain. She was plucking home-grown thyme leaves into her Sunday special of simmering chicken casserole at the time. ‘And cream is hardly, how you say . . . brave.’

  ‘This is England, dear,’ her father had soothed, looking over the top of his newspaper, pipe billowing its sweet-scented tobacco smoke from the corner of his mouth. ‘Bold colours are not in our blood. We’re essentially grey to our marrow,’ he’d winked, and yet he’d been the one to hire the painters and give them their brief, ignoring the raised eyebrows.

  Happier days, Stella mused as she sipped a mug of tea, seated in the bench window of the kitchen and overlooking the garden where sparrows scrabbled over a small knuckle of bread she’d tossed out moments ago. It was mild but drizzling – the worst combination, she thought, because it made her hair feel wretched and frizzy. She touched her soft dark curls and considered what to wear. It felt important to get her outfit right.

  Aunt Dil yawned, bustling into the kitchen in her dressing-gown. It was Sunday morning and church had been passed up in favour of having a sleep-in. Stella believed after last month’s mind service – many weeks later than it should have been, because neither she nor the children could face it – was more than enough attention from the congregation. The gossip-mongers would be working hard at spreading the news around the neighbourhood of how her parents had died.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts, love?’

  Stella smiled at how much Dil was like her father. He had used that expression regularly too but it was more than that; something about the way they said it, the shapes of their heads, even her aunt’s smile that flattened her lips and dipped her eyelids was reminiscent of her brother’s.

  ‘Just thinking about tomorrow,’ she replied, ‘you know, whether this is the right decision. I didn’t pour you one because I wasn’t sure —’
>
  Her aunt waved a hand to assure her it was not of any consequence and busied herself making a cup of tea from the big brown pot beneath the knitted cosy; she remembered when her father had knitted it how her mother had laughed at him. ‘I like knitting,’ he’d replied to the snickering. ‘Good skills for the trenches, too.’

  She’d missed what her aunt had been saying about today’s dilemma. ‘. . . and it’s a brave decision, Stella, that’s for sure. But they say fortune favours the brave, don’t they? And if what your friend says is right, then maybe you can get yourself on your feet fast.’

  Friend? She didn’t even know Rafe’s last name.

  ‘I spoke to Uncle Bryn and he thinks you’re wonderful, by the way – but then he always did – and he said you’re not to worry about Rory and Carys.’ She came over and squeezed Stella’s shoulder. ‘You know we love them like our own, darling. We’re all in this together. While I still feel as shocked as I did the day we learned of their terrible end, I think if we don’t help you to make changes, don’t help you to take a step forward, then we all risk being trapped by the grief. You’re an adult, you can reason it out, but we have to show Rory and Carys that a good life is ahead of them and that they’re safe and loved. If you think doing this might make all the difference, then we’re right behind you.’

  ‘What if it’s too much of a change for them?’

  ‘Change never hurt anyone and they love our house, our garden. Rory can bring his bicycle – he’ll have fun riding the country lanes, he can fish in the river nearby and I’ll make an extra effort with Carys, I promise. I’ll teach her how to sew and I’ll make up that pattern she’s talking about – we can do it together.’

  It sounded like a perfect shift of scene from Clapham and her aunt was surely right – it couldn’t hurt them. If anything, the shift could help them to look past the constant sorrow that pressed on their young shoulders. ‘What if they forget me?’

  ‘Rory, forget you? Don’t be ridiculous, girl. He worships you! And Carys wants to be you. No, we’ll make it like a holiday for them. We’ll talk to the school and I’m sure they’ll understand and support this plan. You’re doing it for them, after all. But more than anything, Stella, you need some time to get your head together. I’m not worried about your brother and sister, I’m worried about you. You haven’t grieved properly and it’s all bottled up in there,’ she said, pointing towards Stella’s heart. ‘You’re having to be so stoic for the children that you’re forgetting you need to find a way out of the bleakness too. Maybe going away from this house for a while will give you a chance to take a break from the memories crowding in all the time.’

  Stella nodded glumly at the truth of her aunt’s words.

  ‘I feel like they’re still here,’ Dil continued with a sigh. ‘I can still smell your father’s tobacco, your mother’s perfume around the house, but we’re all moving so silently around it as though we don’t want to disturb the ghosts. We all need to leave here – and them – for a while.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘I am. And when we come back to the house we’ll all feel a bit differently about it and we’ll have what your uncle Bryn likes to call “perspective”.’

  ‘I’ll go for the interview, then,’ Stella agreed, feeling the decision settle into place snugly.

  ‘Go and listen. See what this woman can offer you. You said your traineeship should be safe . . . any more word on that?’

  Stella put down her mug of half finished, cooled tea and nodded. ‘One piece of luck; apparently my timing couldn’t be better. My supervisor is going to be in America for a number of months on a special buying trip as we broaden our range of products. Management is quite glad that I’ve broached the subject of time away. The manager of our department said he could view it as compassionate leave and that I could take an extended holiday.’

  ‘Oh, Stella. I think it’s meant to be, don’t you?’ Dil said.

  She nodded. ‘I’ll meet her tomorrow, then.’

  Twenty-four hours later Stella was seated across a wood, chrome and glass desk from a blonde, glamorously attired woman who smoked using a cocktail-length cigarette holder and wore a chic black-and-white satin dress that tied at the hip. Suzanne stared at Stella with liquid eyes that were the colour of chartreuse. They were seated in a large office of a Victorian building, spring light filtering its way through an overcast Monday and the crowded buildings around Victoria Station. Both of the bulbous wall sconces were switched on, throwing a muted glow from their opal glass, and the tall desk lamp added its yellowy highlight to the surface that was free of clutter and inlaid with gilded leather. Stella’s thoughts were already reaching to the fact that she would be heading home from this appointment in the rain.

  ‘Do you want one?’ the woman suddenly said, her voice as smoky as the tobacco residue she exhaled as she spoke.

  Stella regarded the box of pastel-coloured Sobranie cigarettes. It was surely no accident that Suzanne Farnsworth had chosen to smoke the pale yellow that echoed the waxen quality of her flawless make-up. Stella knew all about make-up from her days on the department-store floor and she was sure the woman was using a colour called gardenia. She wore Jean Patou’s Moment Suprême perfume too, Stella was sure, for despite the cigarette smoke, the room still held warm notes of rose and clove, and even the spicy geranium she remembered from the perfume counter days was echoed close up.

  ‘I won’t, thank you,’ she replied.

  ‘It’s just that you look anxious.’

  ‘Do I? I’m simply unfamiliar with how this all works. But they’re very pretty,’ she admitted, admiring the gleaming gold tips of the remaining cigarettes in the box.

  ‘They’re like lovely jewels. I prefer to smoke Black Russians at night, though, especially with a flute of champagne.’

  And Stella could well imagine this elegant woman in a flowing gown at the theatre, clasping an opera-length cigarette holder and a sinful black cigarette with gleaming gold tip smouldering at its end, while she draped herself in the dress circle. Stella had served enough of those wealthy customers in her time.

  Suzanne lifted the holder to the corner of her peach-frosted lips that contrasted with shocking black nail varnish and lazily inhaled from her cigarette again. She apparently had no qualms about studying Stella so obviously, head cocked this time with interest, before blowing out the smoke high.

  ‘So, Stella, let me explain. My client wishes to secure the services of an educated woman with a “refined demeanour” who can live-in and improve her charge’s French in particular, but also encourage her student to read widely and have a greater appreciation of art and culture.’

  Stella nodded and let out a silent breath. Did she really want to do this? ‘Um, may I ask how old the child is?’

  Suzanne consulted some notes on a sheet of paper. ‘It says here that Georgina is around sixteen.’ She glanced up and the look in those intelligent green eyes echoed Stella’s sinking feeling.

  ‘That’s a tricky age,’ Stella remarked.

  ‘It is, I won’t deny it. But you and I have both been there and I always think the key to teenagers is remembering that we were likely all fractious and self-centred in our teens. I would suggest you think of it as Georgina’s rite of passage if you take the role on. But this is a very wealthy family and everything will be done for you. Your role is simply to be a guide and tutor to Georgina; other household staff will take care of all your domestic needs such as meals, laundering, ironing and so on. You will have a driver at your disposal if you and Georgina wish to take an excursion and of course all expenses, outside of private ones, will be catered to.’

  Stella blinked, uncertain; it sounded too good to be true. ‘So just one child?’

  ‘There is another daughter but far younger. Her name is Grace. She’s um . . .’ Suzanne scanned her page. ‘Ah yes, Grace is nine.’ She lifted an eyebrow. ‘Quite a gap, I agree. But your role for Grace is again French, perhaps some music – you play piano, don’
t you?’

  Stella nodded.

  ‘Good. And keeping up her reading, spelling. Nothing too wearying.’

  ‘What about school?’

  ‘They both go to a fine ladies’ college – I’ll furnish you with the details if we proceed. So the good news is that you are essentially free during the day of the school term, although you will be responsible for ensuring their delivery and pick up from the college daily. During evenings you supervise Georgina’s homework. On weekends you will work around Georgina’s schedule to ensure she has an hour of French over the days and an artistic excursion once a month. During school holidays is when it becomes more intensive – and as you might know, the girls’ private school holidays can extend longer than your brother’s and sister’s school holidays. As such, you are required to work out a holiday program that steps up your tutoring while still allowing Georgina to enjoy her term breaks.’

  ‘Where is the family based?’

  Suzanne picked up her cigarette from the ashtray. The flakes of burned tobacco dropped off silently. She inhaled slowly and Stella guessed the woman was considering whether this was information she should share at this point. ‘The family resides not far from Tunbridge Wells,’ she finally said.

  ‘Oh, that’s good to know. It’s easy to get back to London.’

  ‘Yes. Straight down the line, no train change necessary from the nearest station.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Suzanne smiled softly. ‘I’ll get to that. Now, Miss Myles, thank you for all the information you gave me,’ she said, briefly waving another page in the air that Stella recognised her own handwriting on as being details of her music exams. ‘I should let you know that your French test was flawless too.’

  Stella didn’t want to mention that she knew her French was colloquially flawless but that Miss Farnsworth’s test was not, with errors typical of those made by the British who acquire French. The agent continued. ‘I will check your references, of course, but certainly from what you’ve told me you are impressively qualified for this role. Do you care to tell me why you’re applying, though –I mean, you are obviously set on a career path in retailing and you’ve clearly battled to be accepted into the traineeship as a buyer . . . no small feat. Why change that course now?’