The Girl from the Paradise Ballroom

by Alison Love

  Turning away he examined the business card that the Tatler girl had left behind. Bernard’s first novel had been published two months before. It was a murder mystery, set in the Cambridge of his student days. His hero was rich, humane, stupendously clever. Women adored him, but some deeply buried grief prevented him ever accepting their love. Privately Bernard thought the book frivolous, not like the futuristic novel he had written before the war. He had begun it as light relief, to distract him during the blitz; then, in the bleak, blank days that followed Olivia’s death, he had found that writing numbed the horror, blotting out the visions that spooled inexorably through his head. The last chapters he had written in a frenzy, surfacing from the page to find that it was three in the morning. He had been astonished by the book’s success. Already there was talk of a second edition, despite the shortage of paper.

  The tea things were growing cold upon the table. Once Avril would have been quick to collect them, but since her return to Bedford Square she had been mopey and distracted. Avril had joined the Wrens during the war. She had been posted to Egypt, where her heart was soundly broken by a married naval officer. Bernard could not help thinking less of her, for turning what should have been the great adventure of her life into a cliché from a cheap romance. He was about to call her to take the tray away when the doorbell rang. Filomena, he thought, Nina. There was a flurry of noise in the hallway, and then footsteps scrambling up the stairs. With an effort he composed himself to greet his daughter.

  “Come along, Nina,” said Filomena’s voice on the landing. “Don’t be silly, go inside, say hallo to your papa. He’s waiting for you.”

  The door inched cautiously open. Nina was wearing a Viyella dress of Black Watch tartan. It was too small for her, and with her wild hair and beaky face it made her look like some feral creature, a lynx, a pine marten, forced into human clothes.

  “Hallo, sweetheart,” said Bernard. “Come and give your old father a kiss. No, not like that, sweetheart, don’t screw up your face like that. Give me a proper kiss. That’s better.”

  —

  In Melbourne it was a bright winter’s morning, with a crisp wind blowing from the ocean. Antonio was sitting in the café near the harbor where he and Peppino lodged. In his hands there was an unopened letter with a London postmark. He kept turning the envelope between his fingers, twice, three, four times, as though the act of turning might change the message written upon it.

  Peppino, who worked in the café, was preparing to open up, wiping down the counter, flicking dust from the tables. They were mundane tasks but as he performed them Peppino felt the peppery invigorating sense of his own liberty. He and Antonio had been released from Tatura shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Manpower was in short supply; it seemed suddenly absurd to be squandering the energies of a captive workforce. They joined the Employment Company of the Australian army, and were sent to pick fruit—peaches and ripe yellow pears—in the orchards of Victoria.

  Crossing toward his friend, Peppino took the envelope gently from his hands. It was the second letter Antonio had sent to his sister in Frith Street. Like the first it had been returned: Not known at this address.

  “You could write to your wife in Lazio,” said Peppino.

  Antonio shook his head. “Filomena is the one who haunts me. Even my son—well, he was always his mother’s child. I don’t suppose he remembers me at all. But I hate to think that Filomena still believes me dead. And if I cannot find her, maybe it would be better if I stayed lost. I have a good life here, a successful life, I am doing what I love. Perhaps I should be content to leave the past alone.”

  Two months after joining the Australian army Antonio had taken part in a community concert at Melbourne Town Hall, organized to raise public morale. His performance had caused a sensation. The concert had been broadcast by the local radio station, and before he knew it Antonio was in demand across the state. He sang in army barracks and workplace canteens, the sentimental songs that everyone knew: “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “We’ll Meet Again.” Now that the war was over his career was flourishing. He regularly performed in Melbourne, and an executive from Columbia’s Australian company wanted to record a disc, although so far nothing had come of it.

  Peppino frowned. “I do not know, Antonio. It is different for me, I have no ties with the old world. There is no reason I should not settle and be happy here. But you…”

  The previous month Peppino had applied to become an Australian citizen. There would be no revolution in Italy now: Togliatti, the bespectacled communist leader, had squandered the opportunity by joining the postwar coalition government. It would do him no good, said Peppino; the Christian Democrats would chew him up and spit him out like gristle. Meanwhile in Australia the summers were warm, and there was a newness about the country that made all things seem possible, not like hidebound world-weary England. Besides, his two sea voyages had left their mark upon Peppino. He could only sleep beside an open window, and even then he woke at night, sweating and screaming.

  “I could be happy here too,” said Antonio, faintly mutinous. “Why not? I have my career, and nothing in my life means more to me now.”

  “What about the Englishman? The one who paid for your singing lessons. I remember him, he was a man who liked doing good. He may be willing to look for Filomena.”

  “I cannot write to Mr. Rodway, Peppino. I slept with his wife. Worse than that: I was in love with his wife. How in God’s name can I ask for his help?”

  Peppino grinned. “You are too scrupulous, Antonino,” he said, and then, more seriously: “The war has changed many things. What does it matter if you loved his wife? He may not know, he may not care. He may be glad to learn that among so many dead you are still alive.” Peppino strode across the room to unlock the door of the café. “Besides, aren’t you curious to find out what has happened to the beautiful Mrs. Rodway? She too may want to start a new life in Australia. With or without her husband.”

  Antonio was silent. Even now, after seven years, he could hardly bear to think about Olivia.

  “She is a rich man’s wife, Peppino,” he said at last. “It is not possible. What kind of life could I offer her?”

  “You cannot forget her, though, can you, Antonio?” Peppino’s voice was matter-of-fact. “I see how you are with other women, in the nightclubs, here in the café. They gaze, they flirt, and you smile sweetly back at them, but you cannot forget her.”

  Antonio looked across at his friend. “No,” he said, “that is true. I will never forget her.”

  It was a beautiful day in June, and Filomena was sitting at her desk beside the window, overlooking the garden. Above the house Firle Beacon lay like a sleeping giant, lush and primeval. A shrill cloud of swifts wheeled through the sky.

  Nina, on the lawn, was dancing. It was a clumsy, self-absorbed, dervishlike dance, her limbs flailing to and fro. Lying on the grass was her favorite toy, a cloth rabbit, now grubby and threadbare. Bernard had bought her several expensive toys—a celluloid doll that cried, a rocking horse for her bedroom—but the rabbit was the only thing to which Nina had become attached. Filomena could see from her lips that she was singing under her breath, and a desperate wave of love washed through her.

  She turned away to the letter on her desk. It was from her sister, Paolina. Since the war had ended, Paolina had written from Lazio every two or three months, screeds of gossip and grievance in badly spelled Italian. Her husband had enlisted early in the war and he was killed soon afterward, somewhere in Russia; Paolina did not seem to know exactly where or when. He had left her with a tribe of children who ran half-wild around the village. Paolina was always recounting their misdemeanors: stealing figs from the neighbors’ trees, pushing each other into streams and spiny myrtle bushes. According to her last letter her oldest son had broken his brother’s nose, cracking a water pitcher over his head.

  Mostly, though, Paolina complained about Danila. Some of those complaints were familiar to Filomena. She tells me h
ow to cook spaghetti as if I had not been doing it all my life. She thinks that because she has one docile son she can lecture me on controlling the behavior of my children. She believes she is better than I am, cleverer, more refined. Lately the complaints had grown vaguer and more hostile. Danila had become Valentino’s housekeeper—the word was underlined—which was not respectful to the memory of their dear brother Antonio. She had moved into their grandmother’s house in the village, and possession, Paolina said darkly, is nine-tenths of the law. When Filomena asked her sister what she meant her reply was more enigmatic than ever. It was not Valentino’s fault, she wrote, he would always do right by his family. The trouble was that he had never been able to say no to a pretty woman.

  Filomena shook the pages from the envelope. She had expected another baffling lament about Danila’s behavior, but this letter was short and matter-of-fact. Paolina’s eldest daughter, Giulia, was getting married: a good marriage, Paolina said, to a young man named Franco Rossi, the son of Valentino’s employer. It had all happened very quickly, but that was the war for you, it had changed so many things. Filomena tried to think how old Giulia was. Sixteen, maybe seventeen? Probably she was pregnant, only Paolina did not want to say so. The wedding was taking place in July, in the village. You should come, wrote Paolina, you are Giulia’s aunt after all, and it is over ten years since you traveled to Italy. If you leave it much longer you will have forgotten what your family looks like.

  “Tcha,” said Filomena, pulling a face. It is impossible, she thought, I cannot drop everything, I have responsibilities here. Paolina does not understand that. Through the window she could see that Nina had wandered into the vegetable garden. She was standing among the runner beans, climbing her rabbit up the bamboo wigwam that supported the plants. Filomena looked at the letter once more. At least Paolina had not invoked the memories of their father, of their brother Antonio; that was something to be thankful for. Even as she thought this, Filomena saw Enrico’s face, stony and reproachful, his mouth rigid beneath his coarse gray mustache. Oh dear God, she thought, the ghosts. She tucked Paolina’s letter into one of the desk’s cubbyholes; then she got to her feet and called Nina in for her tea.

  —

  In the drawing room at Bedford Square Bernard was mixing gin and Its. He handed one to Filomena, who was sitting opposite him in a brown leather armchair.

  “Chin chin,” he said, raising his glass.

  Whenever she stayed at Bedford Square, Filomena’s behavior was impeccable, Bernard thought. She made sure that he was not disturbed by Nina during his working hours; trickier still, she contrived not to offend Avril, who was touchy about her status in the household. Filomena would eat her supper early with Nina, fetching the tray herself so that Avril would not have to serve her. Then, when Nina had gone to bed, she would have a drink with Bernard. He looked forward to these occasions. In theory they gave him an opportunity to discuss Nina, but in practice he and Filomena talked about much more: Bernard’s progress in tracking refugees, Filomena’s childhood in Soho, how the world had changed since the war’s end. There was something infinitely reassuring about Filomena. Over the years she had grown stouter but it suited her, it made her look handsome and sensible. She was the thread that linked Bernard, innocently, to so much—deeper, less innocent—that he had lost.

  Tonight he felt he had earned his gin and It. That afternoon they had taken Nina to the zoo. It was not an excursion Bernard would have chosen, traipsing around the enclosures in Regent’s Park, and having made the sacrifice he had been disappointed by Nina’s response. She stared at the giraffes and the sleek tigers in silence, sucking her fingers.

  “Well, a long day,” Bernard said in a jovial voice. “I expect Nina will sleep like a log.”

  Filomena nodded, but she did not answer. There was a preoccupied expression on her face.

  “Is anything the matter, Filomena?” asked Bernard.

  Filomena hesitated for a moment; then she said: “I have had a letter from my sister, Paolina. Her daughter Giulia is getting married next month in our village in Lazio. Paolina has asked me to come to the wedding.” She lifted her face candidly toward him. “I would like to go, Mr. Rodway. It is years since I saw my family. And I will not be gone for long, two weeks, maybe three.”

  “Oh,” said Bernard, nonplussed. “What about Nina?”

  “I thought that maybe she could stay here in London. She is shy and awkward with you, Mr. Rodway. You can see it for yourself, you must have noticed it today, at the zoo. She hardly said a word, which is not like Nina. If she spent more time in your company I’m sure that she would overcome her shyness.”

  “Well, perhaps.” The prospect of being alone with his daughter for two weeks, without the buffer of Filomena’s presence, filled Bernard with a kind of blunt panic. “Perhaps you’re right, perhaps I ought to get to know the child better. But now is not the best of times, Filomena. I have my refugee work, I have my second book to finish. And Avril would not be able to care for Nina, she would not be willing to care for Nina, we would have to engage a nanny…”

  He waited for Filomena to interrupt and say, Ah, well, I will not go, if it is not convenient. She was silent, though, looking across at him from the armchair. Her steadfastness took Bernard by surprise.

  “Well,” he said, “I can understand that you want to see your family again. Of course you do, I should have thought of that before, it was inconsiderate of me.” He took a mouthful of gin and It. “I have a suggestion, Filomena. Why don’t you take Nina with you? A holiday abroad will be good for her. I’ll pay your expenses, naturally. Then when I have cleared my desk a little I can come and join you. We can have some days in Rome, I can spend time with my daughter there.”

  Filomena frowned. “It will not be very interesting for Nina. The village where my family lives is very quiet, and I will have to spend most of my time with my relatives—”

  “Oh, Nina won’t mind. All new things are interesting to a child, don’t you agree? Besides, I would like my daughter to see Europe, I would like her to see how people in other countries live. I don’t want her to grow up as a prim little English girl.” Bernard swallowed the last of his drink and rose to mix another one. “Of course, I’m assuming that you intend to come home again, Filomena. You’re not secretly planning to run away to Lazio and abandon us?”

  He had intended the remark as a joke—a clumsy one, admittedly—but Filomena looked stricken. “I would never do that. I would never abandon Nina.” She paused, her cheeks flushed with distress. “I will be happy to take her to Italy, Mr. Rodway, if you will trust me with her.”

  “Oh, Filomena. There is nobody I would trust more, you must know that. Now, let me refill that glass of yours. And tomorrow we will start to make the arrangements for your journey.”

  —

  “Well, I feel honored,” said Lionel, in his bluff facetious way, “it is not often that I dine out with a celebrity.”

  Bernard signaled to the waiter to bring more bread. “Don’t be absurd,” he said. They were having dinner at Rules in Maiden Lane. The restaurant was Lionel’s choice. Beneath its gilded glass roof it served the traditional English food that he favored: jugged hare, steamed game pudding, treacle tart.

  Lionel was in London to negotiate new orders from the expensive shops of Jermyn Street. The silk business, like so many industries, had changed during the war. With silk supplies from the Far East cut off, there had been a rise in synthetic fibers like rayon and nylon. Now, in an age of austerity, those cheaper materials had taken over the mass market; silk, it seemed, was an indulgence destined only for the wealthy.

  “Do you think it will be successful, concentrating on luxury goods?” asked Bernard. “Times are hard. Nobody has money to burn.”

  Lionel shrugged complacently. “There are always people prepared to pay for something special, even with rationing. That is one of the things I love about England. The poor may always be with us, but so are the rich, thank God.” He ate some po
tted shrimps and glanced up at the baroque lyres and laurels on the glass ceiling. “It’s such a shame Mother can’t share in your success, Bernard. She’d have loved to see your picture in the papers. Poor old girl. It’s a living death, don’t you think?”

  The doodlebug that killed Olivia had been too much for Penelope. Within a year her memory had begun to disintegrate. At first Lionel’s wife, Caroline, managed well enough, retrieving her when she went wandering along the lane, placidly replying when she asked the same question twenty times. She lost patience, though, when Penelope started to roam the house at night, leaving lighted cigarettes on the sideboards. She’s a danger to everyone, Caroline said. What about the children? What about the dogs? Penelope had been installed in a very expensive care home where she sat drugged and passive, her hair immaculate with lacquer.

  “She always said that you were going to be a great writer, she would have been thrilled to bits.” Lionel speared his last brown shrimp and ate it. “Of course, you must be thrilled too.”

  Bernard grimaced. “Dust and ashes, Lionel,” he said, “dust and ashes.”

  Lionel put back his head and laughed. “Nonsense. You can’t fool me, Bernard, you’re loving it. Did you say that you’ve finished the second book?”

  “I finished it last week.” Bernard leaned back in his chair to allow the waiter to remove their plates. “I wanted my publisher to have the manuscript before I leave for Rome.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Lionel, “the holiday in Rome. Nina’s there now, is she? With what’s her name—the Italian girl—Filomena?”

  Bernard let out a sharp sigh. “Spit it out, Lionel. I can tell you don’t approve of my domestic arrangements.”

  “I think you should send Nina to a decent boarding school, that’s all. Rightly or wrongly, there’s a lot of prejudice against Eyeties still. At the very least you should prevent this girl of yours from talking to her in Italian. Young children shouldn’t speak two languages, it hampers their development. Besides, it will make Nina different, which is never a good thing in my opinion. She’s a bit of a changeling as it is. A boarding school would knock off the rough edges, help her to fit in. I’m sure she’ll be grateful when she’s older.”