The Magic Hour

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘That suiting looks very twenties in style,’ Mrs Smithers went on ruthlessly, as if determined to remain coldly objective about Alexandra’s transformation. ‘I remember people wearing suits just like that when I was growing up. I hope you didn’t pay too much for it. I must have a trunk full of outfits like that in the attic.’

  Alexandra turned and smiled brightly and determinedly at Mrs Smithers, because she was not fooling her for an instant.

  ‘You’re going to be fine while I’m away,’ she told her firmly, ignoring her remarks. ‘Everyone is going to be putting all hands to the pump, and there will be nothing more for you to do than you do normally. You’ll see, really you will.’

  ‘I just don’t see why you have to go away for the whole week—’

  ‘Because,’ said Alexandra with sudden and rare passion, ‘Because I need to get away for a little. You must understand I have not been away from here for so long. I mean I hardly know what it is like not to be looking into the appointment book, not to be planning meals, supervising the builders next door, or reminding Jane that we need new tea towels.’ She took Mrs Smithers’s hands in hers. ‘Now repeat after me: “Minty is coming back soon, Minty is coming back soon.”’

  Mrs Smithers did not find this in the least bit amusing, but merely turned her head away like a sulky child and sniffed.

  ‘At least we have got Lydia Passmore playing bridge,’ she said. ‘At least there is that.’

  Alexandra ignored her, picked up her handbag and headed for the door. In her mind’s eye she could see her new car, the open road, a plush hotel where she would have to do nothing for herself. In other words she could see freedom from wool and chatty bridge, from Mrs Smithers and Jane. Just for a few days she was going to walk about London and no one would know her, no one would care if she was wearing the woolly hats or gloves they had knitted her for Christmas, or had put out the ornament they had given her for her birthday. Just for once she would be able to upset no one but herself, care only to do what she wanted to do, and pass people who didn’t know who she was or where she was going, and were less than curious.

  ‘I will telephone to you tonight when I reach London,’ she called over her shoulder, but Mrs Smithers did not reply, determined on becoming a martyr to Alexandra’s selfish desire for a short holiday.

  ‘Bye, Jane!’

  She opened the kitchen door and stared in. Jane was polishing silver, but also looking sulky, as if Alexandra’s absence was going to give her a great deal more work, which it wasn’t, since she had found a temporary replacement through a local agency.

  ‘Mrs Cruddle is just feeding the dogs, and then she will be up to take over. She won’t be more than ten minutes.’

  Jane pretended not to hear. Alexandra closed the door with a sigh. She had no idea that taking a week off could cause so much trouble, or prove to her how much she herself was needed.

  She swung through the door to her car, her proudest, newest purchase and drove off in it with her hat pulled firmly down, and the roof gaily open. She had packed all her new clothes into new luggage, and was so determined to enjoy herself that it occurred to her that if the end of the world was announced, it could not destroy her mood.

  The speed with which Bodel O’Brien Advertising Inc. had taken off had surprised even the partners. It semed that once you had doors open to you in New York, once great wealth in the shape of the optimistic and agreeable widows of huge corporations decided to back you, the world was certainly not your oyster, the world was, as Alfred put it after success seemed certain, ‘One hell of a pearl, my friend, one hell of a pearl, that is what the world has turned into for us.’

  Tom might have turned his back on romance in favour of escorting beautiful models and actresses, all of whom could not wait to be associated with the company, but Alfred had all too predictably fallen in love with the daughter of a chic Long Island banker. It took some time to persuade her father that Alfred Bodel was everything he could want in a future son-in-law, but persuade him Alfred finally did, which meant that on a fine sunny Saturday morning Tom found himself acting as best man to his best friend, wishing him all the luck in the world, while knowing that Alfred and Scottie would really not need it. They already had it. The luck was they had met, and they had fallen in love, and now they were married. Who needed more luck than that?

  The weddings of those close to you, however, have a way of concentrating the mind, and having – together with four hundred other guests – waved Alfred and Scottie off on their honeymoon, Tom turned his mind to returning to England. He had already written to Mrs Posnet to warn her he intended on returning for a fortnight’s holiday, and now it seemed there was no better time to do it than the present.

  ‘I knew you would be back,’ his old landlady told him with a smile when Tom walked into her kitchen looking and feeling like a stranger compared to the boy who had left it for the Duke’s glasshouses and gardens what seemed like half a century before. ‘I knew you would be back, and I knew you would be different, but I also knew the kind of different you would be.’

  Tom leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, which made her blush, before he swung her round a couple of times.

  ‘I have bought you so many presents,’ he told her. ‘So many presents from New York. You are going to be the belle of the town.’

  ‘How do you know I’m not that already?’ Mrs Posnet pointed proudly towards her small, narrow hall. ‘It’s tuppence to talk to me now I have a telephone, young man, if not threepence.’

  Tom laughed.

  ‘You’ll be even more the belle of the town, put it that way.’

  He had bought her a taffeta petticoat that crackled and swayed to go under an evening skirt, a spring hat with ribbons and flowers, and a bottle of scent from Bergdorf Goodman that had somehow miraculously stayed unbroken.

  ‘You’re spoiling me,’ Mrs Posnet told him, delighted, and she tried on the hat even though it looked a little strange with the clothes she was wearing. ‘Now, enough of that, sit down and I will make you tea, and I’ve baked a cake for your coming, and some home-made biscuits.’

  Tom ate his cake dutifully and with relish, drank his tea, and felt quite a lad again, despite his smart clothes and urbane transatlantic manners and accent.

  ‘So you’re a millionaire are you now, Tom O’Brien?’

  ‘Not quite, but something like,’ he admitted. ‘Just by chance, I met Alfred Bodel on the Queen Mary – and just by chance we met these old dears and they backed us to go into television, sponsoring afternoon theatre, that sort of thing. In America, you see, unlike here, Mrs P., the women have their say. Some people say they hold complete sway. Anyway, the thing took off very quickly, and in a very short space of time, there we were, a success. You know what I found out though, Mrs P.?’

  Mrs Posnet eyed him with interest. He had changed so much that despite what she had said she felt she hardly knew Tom O’Brien now from the wordless boy who had lodged with her.

  ‘I have found that it is easier to be a success than a failure, that is what I have found.’

  In her turn Mrs Posnet must have found this remark a little conceited because she ignored it and then felt it incumbent on her to put Tom down, to remind him from where she shrewdly knew his good luck had originated.

  ‘You know Lady Florazel still comes down to stay here at her brother’s house, don’t you? She even comes here for tea now and then, likes to talk over old times.’

  If Tom had looked conceited in her eyes before, now he looked young, stricken, almost helpless at hearing Florazel’s name mentioned, and since he got up to leave very shortly after, Mrs Posnet was sure that she had put her foot in it, which indeed she had. Perhaps to make up for this she changed the subject, but only slightly.

  ‘You are going to look up that poor Bob Atkins’s girl, aren’t you, Tom?’

  Tom paused by the door. He wanted nothing more than to hotfoot it away from his old lodgings, before by some dreadful chance Florazel turned up.
He wished he hadn’t decided to visit his old landlady. He even found himself wishing to God he hadn’t come back to England, especially if the price he had to pay was seeing Florazel again.

  Since he had sailed for America he had been at pains to have only the most light-hearted of affairs, had taken care not to let his heart become involved, never wishing to go through that same humiliating, despairing heartbreak he had suffered over Florazel. He was determined that he was not about to break that resolution, for he was all too aware that once the heart had been damaged, you never quite knew what would happen. It was not time to go, so much as time to flee.

  ‘I have already telephoned Miss Stamford’s hotel,’ he told Mrs Posnet. ‘We are due to have a drink together tomorrow lunchtime. At Claridge’s.’

  Mrs Posnet frowned.

  ‘I’m not sure that Claridge’s Hotel would be quite the right place for Miss Stamford, Tom, really I’m not. She is a simple sort of girl, quite home-spun in some ways, you know. Very pretty, but never London smart. You wouldn’t want to make her feel ill at ease, would you? Just because you’re a rich boy now doesn’t mean that everyone else is as well off as you, young man.’

  ‘She sounded all right about it on the telephone.’

  Tom was fairly legging it back to his car now, almost panic-struck.

  ‘Well,’ Mrs Posnet agreed, following him and shrugging her shoulders. ‘I dare say if she sounded all right about it, it will be all right.’ She caught Tom by the arm. ‘But you’re not to hurt her feelings. You know what I mean? Not to laugh at her, or condescend to her in a way that could hurt. She’s been hurt enough by poor Bob Atkins’s death. Still not herself, I wouldn’t have said, even after however long it has been.’

  ‘Listen, if I still miss Bob, she must do so much more, I realise that.’

  ‘Well, never mind that. Just you mind your manners as far as Miss Stamford is concerned, young man, and thank you for the hat and everything, you shouldn’t have, but I’m glad you did!’

  Tom nodded, waved to her from the window of his hired car, and drove off too fast.

  Certainly Mrs Posnet had said enough, there had been enough warning in her eyes to make him feel that meeting Miss Minty Stamford was not going to be exactly the glam date of all time. But at least he was only meeting her for a drink, and at least it was in London.

  Alexandra had never been to Claridge’s for a drink before, so she was immediately impressed by the ambience, which was civilised, old-fashioned and full of the kind of quiet class she had only ever read about in magazines. She had not meant to arrive before Thomas O’Brien, but once it was clear that she had, she made up her mind to enjoy herself.

  ‘I don’t think I will order yet, as I am expecting someone,’ she told the waiter as he put down some nuts in a bowl. ‘The worst of it is,’ she confided, ‘I have no idea what he looks like. Would you know what a Mr Thomas O’Brien looks like? He is staying here, I think.’

  The waiter looked round.

  ‘He’s just coming in now, miss, that’s him over there, I think.’

  But it wasn’t, it was another Mr O’Brien, also staying. They both laughed, and parted, and Alexandra sat down once again now feeling even more isolated and not a little foolish, despite the fact that it was only just twelve-thirty.

  ‘I will page him for you, if you like – Miss er?’

  ‘Stamford. But no need, really. I’m early. Silly of me. Taxi ride was much shorter than I expected.’

  ‘Very well, miss, but I will inform that gentleman over there. He will tell you when your Mr O’Brien, Mr Thomas O’Brien whom he looks after at dinner, arrives. He will bring him over to you, to avoid any more embarrassment.’

  Alexandra looked away. She was wishing to goodness that she had never agreed to meet poor Bob’s friend when Tom came into the room. He looked around, and eyeing a glamorous, smartly dressed young woman seated at a nearby table immediately dismissed the idea that it could be Minty Stamford, since Mrs Posnet had after all described her as ‘home-spun’. He sat down, looking round for a waiter, instead of which the maître d’hôtel came to his side.

  ‘Mr O’Brien, I think you will find your guest is waiting over there for you.’ He politely indicated the same young woman that Tom had decided was not Minty Stamford.

  Tom stood up and walked over to Alexandra’s table. She looked up at him and smiled.

  ‘Thomas O’Brien?’

  He nodded wordlessly, staring down at her.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, finally.

  Alexandra cleared her throat and held out her hand.

  ‘How nice to meet Bob’s friend at last. I’m Minty Stamford – well, I’m not, actually.’

  ‘You’re not? Really?’

  ‘Well I am, but my real name is actually Alexandra. As you probably know Bob knew me as “Minty”, but I’m really Alexandra, that’s my real name,’ she finished in a rush.

  Tom smiled and sat down feeling an odd sense of relief, as if a yoke had been lifted from his shoulders, as if he had been given a second chance. Minty had been Bob’s girlfriend, but this young woman was not Minty. She was Alexandra, and he realised that this albeit small fact of a name nevertheless freed him from instantly associating this beautiful girl in her close-fitting suit with its pleated skirt and rounded collar from the Minty that Bob had always been going on about. This girl looked altogether different from the maid-of-all-work that he had imagined.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Alexandra asked and she could not help staring, and not just because he was staring at her, but because she saw something in his eyes that she knew she had seen before. She frowned.

  ‘It sounds stupid, but I feel we’ve met before, but of course we couldn’t have …’ Her voice tailed off, but she was still frowning.

  ‘I don’t think we have,’ Tom put in far too quickly, and he sat down, at last. ‘But I have the same feeling, I feel as if we have met before, perhaps because – I have heard so much about you.’

  He could hear his voice saying the words, but felt that it was someone else speaking them, or speaking them for him, because actually his eyes were doing all the speaking, and they were saying: ‘I love your long dark hair, and your blue eyes, and the way your head is carried at such a brave, proud angle, as if you are always ready and waiting to take on the world. And I love your beautiful hands, which are not feline but feminine, and the way you are smiling now is making my heart miss a beat, which it really hasn’t done in such a long while I had forgotten that it actually could.’

  ‘I didn’t dare order a drink, it looks a bit fast, sitting on your own,’ she was saying, half apologetically as if she didn’t really expect him to pay for a drink for her.

  Tom smiled.

  ‘Let’s have a bottle of champagne. After all, we have heard so much about each other. And you know how it is when …’ He was about to say, ‘You have heard so much about someone from a friend,’ but, not wanting to bring up the subject of poor Bob, he went on, ‘Well, I do feel I know you, that I already know you, and even though we haven’t met before, here we are meeting at last, and that does deserve at least a bottle of champagne.’

  They drank their champagne too quickly of course, as people always do when they know they have been instantly set alight by each other, and as they did so the subject of Bob seemed to have become forbidden territory, a name that neither of them wanted to utter; because they both knew instinctively it was a part of something that was the past. At that moment Bob was no longer anything to do with them, and certainly nothing to do with what they knew was happening now. No matter what happened next, the moment that Tom came up to her table Alexandra had become quite sure that the past had become irrelevant, and what was more, perhaps they both knew it.

  ‘You’ve very different from how I imagined, actually,’ Alexandra stated several times, in between everything else they were or were not saying, because inevitably, as happens, they found they were still talking about everything and nothing while still staring at e
ach other, still sure they had met before, that somehow if they could only remember where, it would all come back to them, and they would be able to click their fingers and say, as people do, ‘Of course! Yes, of course, that’s where we met,’ because that feeling of having always known each other just would not go away.

  But in the event they did not snap their fingers at each other, instead they went into lunch, which Tom had not thought for one moment that he would be doing with Minty, but which he now realised he could not wait to do with Alexandra, and after lunch, he took her upstairs to his suite, and they started to kiss and then make love, leaving a trail of clothes across the expensive carpet. It was not something Alexandra ever thought she would do with someone she did not know, but since she felt she had always known him, it seemed perfect. And the truth was it was perfect, and when they walked out into Brook Street a few hours later it seemed to Alexandra that London had never seemed so sparkling, the shop windows so glamorous, the people that they passed so fascinating.

  ‘How about if I take you to a cartoon cinema. Do you like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse?’

  Alexandra had grown up old, as so many solitary, only children do, not just because she was always with older people but because when she was with them she was expected to be old, and talk about old things. And of course just recently she had been with the really quite old, and it was not that she did not like and respect them, but now suddenly she was with Tom, and he was her generation, not old like Mrs Smithers or the Major. So she let him catch her hand and steer her towards a cartoon cinema where they sat for several hours in a haze, pretending to watch cartoons, when in reality all they could remember was making love, and that was all that they now wanted to do. Everything that interrupted the kissing and the love was now irrelevant, timeserving, an interruption.

  ‘You’ll move into my hotel, you’ll be with me here, won’t you?’ Tom gestured round the suite. ‘It’s big enough – you’ll come here, won’t you?’