what, but it made him laugh, and before I had time to say anything much he had put me down and wandered back to talk to her again. It didn’t matter at all, really. I was accustomed to his child-like attention span – and I was just so happy to see him. In any case he returned to me moments later, this time with our benefactor, Mr de Saulles, in tow. ‘Jack! I want you to meet my beautiful, clever, delightful, enchanting, charming, beautiful – did I already say that? – lovely, courageous, extraordinary daughter, Jennifer. Jennifer Doyle. Jennifer, this is Mr de Saulles, our immeasurably kind benefactor.’
De Saulles was tall and powerfully built, a good fifteen years older than his young wife, with hair slicked back from an even-featured, handsome face, a strong American jaw and startling bright blue eyes. He stared at me.
I said something – thanked him, I suppose, for all he’d done for us. He took a long moment to respond, but continued to gaze at me with the same strangely absent intensity. He said – and, like his wife’s, his voice was so clipped he might have been English himself, ‘Did they feed you well?’
I didn’t know if he meant on the ship, or in the house, or what he meant – or really, given the heavy cloud of alcohol that surrounded him, and the blank look behind his eyes, whether he meant anything by the question at all. I said, ‘Very well, thank you.’
Still, he gazed at me. I felt myself blushing. I also noticed Miss Sawyer beside him, fidgeting a little. She didn’t look so great – cheap, with the face paint. It was before we all wore it. Nevertheless I longed to be introduced to her – was on the point of introducing myself, even. But suddenly Mr de Saulles seemed to lose interest.
‘Good,’ he said abruptly. He put a careless arm around Miss Sawyer, pulled her towards him and looked about vaguely. ‘Has anyone seen my darling wife?’
After that Mr Hademak told me I should keep out of the way, so I wandered upstairs to my room at the back of the house – small and simple, but better than the room I had left in Chelsea – and while the music and laughter from downstairs grew steadily louder, I lay on my bed and tried to read.
I couldn’t concentrate. It was such an airless night – and my first in this new and exciting place. It seemed preposterous to be spending it alone in that small, hot room. So around ten o’clock I put the book aside. Downstairs I could hear the booming, bawdy voices of the men (and my father’s as loud as any of them). They were calling for Miss Sawyer and Mr Guglielmi to dance.
Only imagine it! In your own sitting room! I had read about the exhibition dances that were such a mad craze in America. In my bedroom at home in Chelsea I had attempted (from a magazine article) to teach myself the steps of the Castle Walk.
So, still in my travelling clothes, I crept out of the room, down the back stairs and into the front hall.
There were two doors opening into the long drawing room, one from the hall where I was standing, the other from the dining room. It would have been impossible for me to stand at either without being seen and no doubt shooed away, but I figured, on such a hot night, that the french windows – there were four of them connecting the drawing room to the trellised veranda beyond – would certainly have been thrown open. I decided the best view would be from the bushes a few yards in front of the house. So, back through the servants’ hall I crept, through the side door, through the flowerbeds all the way round the side of the house to the bushes by the driveway out front.
It was wonderful to be outside. I felt the cool evening darkness settle on my skin. The sound of music filled the air, and the great sky glittered with stars – the way it never did at home. Suddenly, as I scrambled through the last of the flowerbeds, struggling not to catch my clothes on invisible thorns, a sense of exultation at my new surroundings, at my new freedom – at being so far from England and the war – overtook me; a great explosion of joy, and it made me bolder than I might otherwise have been. I reached the bushes, which would have hidden me safely, and decided I wasn’t close enough. I could get a better view if I climbed right up onto the veranda. So that was what I did. With my heart in my mouth, I tiptoed up the few steps, squeezed into the shadows by the nearest of the open french windows and peered in.
The hotchpotch of rugs had been rolled back, making the room appear even larger and less cared-for than before. Chairs and couches had been arranged in a row along the opposite length of the room, so that the guests were facing out, directly towards me. I was confronted by an array of expensive clothes and shiny, red faces – some of their owners more inebriated than others, of course, though all, I would hazard a guess, a little distance from their sharpest.
In any case it didn’t matter which way they were facing, since everyone’s attention was focused not on me but on the end of the room, where the two professional dancers stood facing one another, waiting to begin.
The chubby duke and another man, waxy-faced and horribly thin, were slumped on one couch, leaning feebly one against the other, their eyes glazed with drink. A shoeless woman, wearing trousers, stood behind the waxy-faced gentleman, softly nuzzling his neck. He didn’t seem to notice it. Neither did the duke, who appeared to be so far gone I don’t suppose he would have blinked if a German Taube had flown across the room and dropped a bomb right there in his lap.
On another couch, pawing one another in languid fashion and both glistening with sweat, was the woman in vibrant yellow, who had earlier so distracted my father, and a dandy gentleman in some sort of military garb, with hair that matched her dress.
And there was another woman, too, alone and dishevelled, propped up in a high-backed rattan chair in the far corner. Her mouth was hanging open, and I think she was asleep. There was Mr Hademak, hovering nervously at the door. And various others, lithe and elegant bodies mostly, lounging this way and that. Finally there was Papa, already smitten – that much was too obvious, even without seeing his face. He perched awkwardly on his chair, his body turned entirely towards Mrs de Saulles, who was stretched out on a chaiselongue beside him, fanning herself. The silly dub had placed himself at such an extreme angle to be in her line of vision that it would be impossible for him to watch the dance. He was talking and jabbering – bending his slim body towards her. But, though she nodded once in a while, she didn’t look at him. Her wide – wired – eyes were fixated on the dancers.
Like a circus master, Mr de Saulles stood beside the Victrola, preparing to set the needle down. Finally, he allowed the music to begin. After that I think, judging by the stillness, everyone – except Papa, of course – forgot everyone else.
The two dancers seemed barely to touch as they glided through the empty space between us, not each other or even the floor. Miss Joan Sawyer had looked so ordinary before, but when she danced with Rudy they transformed, together, into a seamless, shimmering stream, so graceful as to seem barely human. The beauty of it, in such inebriated company, seemed to be especially incongruous. They took my breath away. I had been exposed to more of life than most girls of my age; bawdiness, beauty, wickedness and wit. But this – this was glamour! This was something entirely new.
Then the music stopped, and we were returned to earth. Mr de Saulles, with glassy-eyed determination, stepped forward to dance with Miss Sawyer; Mr Guglielmi melted away, ignored by everyone, except Mrs de Saulles, who didn’t take her eyes from him – and even before her husband and Miss Sawyer had reached the centre of the room Mr Hademak was at the Victrola, setting the needle to the start again.
Before long most of them were dancing – at least, in a manner of speaking. The chubby duke stood swaying, all alone, his glazed eyes roaming over Miss Sawyer; the waxy man and the trouser girl were clasping each other tight, rocking one way and another in a grim effort to respond to the beat or perhaps simply to stay upright. And
