One Enchanted Evening Read online

  They had reached the hotel lobby and, for the first time, Nancy saw its opulence first hand. The floor was a chequerboard of black and red squares. The walls were panelled in dark wood with swirling grain and, on a plinth in the heart of the hall, an obelisk of blue and red glass, the donation of some continental artist, was being ogled by a lady guest dressed in fine brown fur. Doors and hallways led in many directions. The golden lift cages were manned by attendants in tall peaked caps, and a porter in blue and gold wheeled past, dragging behind him a trailer full of tortoiseshell cases and black leather bags.

  At the back of the reception hall, between two staircases which crossed each other as they rose to the garlanded balconies above, a corridor sloped down, through columns and arches, to two great wooden doors. Above the doors, the legendary ‘Grand Ballroom’ was spelled out in italicised copper letters. Perhaps she was mistaken, but as Mrs Moffatt led her towards the service lifts Nancy fancied she could hear the sound of a saxophone. It occurred to her how strange it was to hear the instrument without the crackle of the old gramophone her father used to play.

  ‘What’s . . . what’s down there, Mrs Moffatt?’

  The doors at the corridor’s end opened up and two guests trotted through. For a fleeting moment, she caught sight of a great cavernous ballroom, lit by sparkling chandeliers. The sound of trumpets and trombones flurried up and, as the doors swung shut, Nancy saw – for the barest moment – two figures turning across the dance floor in long, flowing steps. From where she stood, they seemed to be floating on air.

  ‘That, Miss Nettleton, is the Grand Ballroom. Pride of the Buckingham. The demonstration dances are in full flow this afternoon, and every afternoon, for our guests. Don’t worry,’ she went on, with a wry smile, ‘you’ll get to experience its glory soon enough. Those chandeliers are due for a thorough clean. It takes a week to haul them down, spruce them up, and have them rehung.’

  All through the rest of the day, and long into the night that followed, Nancy heard the music of the saxophone, and saw those two dancers floating across the ballroom, as if nothing else mattered in the world.

  Chapter Three

  THERE WASN’T A DEPARTMENT in the Buckingham Hotel that didn’t believe that, were it not for them, the hotel itself would crumble. Ask the restaurateurs, the concierges, the chief engineer, the bookkeeper, the garage attendants, any one of the hundred pages who scurried through the hotel halls. Even the members of the Archie Adams Band, who were polishing their instruments in the lull before the afternoon demonstration dances began, believed the same. ‘We’re the heart and soul,’ Archie Adams told his orchestra. ‘What’s a hotel, if it doesn’t have a heart? Nothing more than bricks and mortar . . .’

  Hélène Marchmont had heard some of the less experienced dancers saying the same thing. It was true that the advent of dancers in the hotel had changed the Buckingham’s fortunes – but so too had the wealth of Lord Edgerton, who became majority shareholder and Director of the Board in the same month the Grand Ballroom first opened its doors (so Hélène did not think it wise to draw too many conclusions). Besides, as principal female dancer of the ballroom, it was unbecoming of her to make comment. Right now, with the time for the demonstration dances approaching, she was on her knees in the dressing rooms trying to stop Sofía LaPegna’s tears making rivers of mascara down her powdered face. The poor girl was beginning to look like a circus clown, and the dances were only an hour away.

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Marchmont. You must think me a frightful—’

  ‘I’ll hear nothing more,’ Hélène said, standing back. ‘SofÍa, you’ve every right to be upset, but . . .’

  Hélène was a tall woman, a favourite among the hotel’s more rarefied guests. She had been tall at thirteen and now, approaching thirty, she stood inches above the rest of the dancers in the troupe. Her striking gold hair was now cut in a fashionable bob to fit beneath her cloche hat, but all that did was accentuate her extraordinary cheekbones and the vivid blues of her eyes. Those eyes had once captured the heart of a photographer, who put her in the pages of Esquire and even Harper’s Bazaar; it was those eyes that had helped to catapult her to the stage and keep her there.

  Sofía was starting to calm down. Some of the other girls were squabbling around, helping each other into their gowns or relaxing with the help of the clove cigarettes that Billy Brogan, rising star among the hotel pages, brought from a place in Chinatown. The air in the dressing room was a fug of clove smoke and sweet perfumes: the heady scent of Guerlain’s Shalimar, the tropical notes of Je Reviens, all of them provided by a boutique perfumery in one of the Regent Street arcades.

  ‘I’ll be fine, Miss Marchmont. I can still dance.’

  Hélène admired Sofía’s resilience. The fact that English was not her native language, and that she still spoke with the fieriness of San Sebastián, from where she came, made her seem more defiant still. ‘Nobody’s questioning that, Sofía.’

  ‘It’s only . . . I know my brother. It is guns with him. Guns, guns, guns, ever since we were children. Sometimes, all a man needs is an excuse, and . . .’

  ‘San Sebastián is a world away from Madrid. He could be across the border and into France by now.’

  ‘Across the border! Our father would turn in his grave. No, Miss Marchmont, he went south two weeks ago. I am certain of that.’ This time Sofía managed to conquer her tears. Hélène saw them welling in her eyes and knelt again, to dab them away with the corner of her chemise.

  Two weeks had already passed and what they were calling the Spanish Emergency showed no signs of coming to a close. The BBC had begun to use the word ‘war’, and the less salubrious news sheets had been using it since the start. Sofía had written immediately to her mother, but as yet there had been no reply. News of atrocity spread so much faster than missives of love. The world would send correspondents to watch the killing, but not to help families.

  There was a knock at the dressing room door and Billy Brogan appeared. Brogan was seventeen years old and seemed to have been born in the Buckingham Hotel itself, so well did he know its nooks and crannies. In the last year Hélène had watched him transform from boy to man – but he still kept some of his impishness of old. He had the face of a cherub, even though he now devotedly cultivated the few whiskers he could grow, and even put pomade in his hair (for the benefit, he insisted, of the hotel’s finest guests). Billy whistled for her and, leaving Sofía to calm herself, Hélène joined him at the door.

  ‘It’s Mr Charles,’ Billy said, his voice still rolling with the Dublin brogue, even though Billy had not been back since he was a child. ‘He requests the honour of your company.’

  Oh he does, does he? She was doing her best to contain her weariness, but the longer she danced at the Buckingham, the more she grew tired of the factions and politicking that went on in the hotel halls. She had come here to dance and, for a time, that had sustained her. Dancing was her life. But now? Now dancing seemed the least of it. Now there’s girls to play mother to, schedules to keep, a hundred different men to keep happy, and all without ever admitting what I really want. When I’m on the ballroom floor, that’s when I’m alive. But when I’m not . . .

  Hélène looked back at her girls. Elisabeth was with Sofía and the room was a chaos of ball gowns and cases and missing shoes, but no matter what they looked like now, Hélène knew they would be striding into the ballroom without a hair out of place when the clocks tolled two. She herself would be wearing a floor-length cotton organdie gown with huge frilled sleeves – a perfect imitation of the one Joan Crawford had worn in Letty Lynton.

  Hélène marched along the hall, up and away from the ballroom as Billy scurried in her wake. ‘Billy,’ Hélène said when they reached the hotel director’s door. ‘Is our honoured guest still in the Grand Colonial Suite? You know the man I mean. The Spaniard . . .’

  Billy nodded. He was here to star in a picture show they were shooting at the old Heatherdon Hall. He’d
brought his leading lady to dine at La Petite Salle, the Buckingham’s finest French restaurant (Billy knew she’d stayed the night as well, even though she was not on the hotel manifest).

  ‘Don’t suppose he’ll be going back to Spain now, will he, miss?’

  Hélène tensed. ‘He’s not to go near Sofía tonight. A glass of champagne and he’ll want to dance with her. Do what you can, won’t you? A nice little distraction, here and there. Get Sofía partnered up with some other guest for the evening.’

  Billy gave Hélène his most ostentatious bow – ‘Your wish is my command!’ – and then, readying herself for yet another battle, Hélène knocked sharply on the director’s door.

  *

  Maynard Charles was not what you would call an insignificant man – but he did pride himself on being invisible. He knew the names of every guest of note at the Buckingham Hotel. He made it a matter of honour that he could recite them all – and, because the Buckingham comprised two hundred bedrooms and twenty-six suites, this was certainly a Herculean task. And yet very few of those guests would have paid him a second glance had they passed him in the reception hall, or sat beside him in the cocktail lounge as they deliberated over their long Martinis. Invisibility, Maynard Charles had long ago decided, was advantageous.

  He was sitting in his office, poring over the manager’s report from the night before, when the knock came at the door. The guest in 311, a wealthy Frenchman, had reported a silver pocket watch missing from his bedside table – and though this was not, in itself, an unusual occurrence, it was vexing him today. Monsieur Fortier was worth so much in future profits to the hotel that the situation had to be carefully stage-managed. Things went missing all the time. Only rarely was it theft. And M. Fortier had enjoyed so much of the hotel’s finest cognac the night before that Maynard was of the opinion he would later discover his silver pocket watch in the cuff of his trousers, or – more likely yet – the handbag of whomever had shared his bed. Maynard would have to ask Billy Brogan to find out exactly who that was. Even so, it was necessary that this was delicately handled. As a matter of course, he would summon the chambermaids to a conference and ask them to commit to a search of their rooms. Then, when he found nothing, he would make restitution from the hotel’s emergency fund to M. Fortier, tell him that the matter had been privately handled, and secure his silence with a complimentary dinner in whichever of the Buckingham’s restaurants took his particular fancy. These were the matters in which a hotel director spent his days.

  The knocking at the door became more insistent. Maynard Charles called out, ‘Enter.’

  Hélène Marchmont slipped quietly through the door. Maynard could see that she was flustered; the dancers of the Buckingham Hotel took nothing more seriously than their daily demonstrations. Quite rightly so. Maynard Charles had not been confident that opening a ballroom was the right thing to do when one of the board first suggested it, but the hotel director’s job is not to protest at the wishes of the board; it is only to make sure that whatever they desire becomes a resounding success. And so, Maynard Charles had set to work. Reasoning that he was not himself a dancing man – he had been born with two left feet and, regardless, had never been intoxicated by music in the way so many young people were – he had done the only thing he knew of that would guarantee success. He had spent. The board had not needed convincing – they were the kind of fellows who understood that the only way to fight your way out of a financial morass of the kind the Buckingham had faced after the Wall Street Crash was to spend. And so the Grand Ballroom had arisen in the place where an ill-attended restaurant used to be. Dancers had been hired from rival establishments, and the Buckingham became the place to be seen. And at least it did not mean stooping as low as the dreadful cabarets that the lesser London hotels had started to open. The dancers and the Archie Adams Band may cost the Buckingham eleven hundred pounds each month of the year, but what they brought in return was incalculable. Even a man of numbers like Maynard Charles did not attempt to put a value on elegance and class.

  ‘Mr Charles, I was told you needed me.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Marchmont. If, perhaps, you would sit.’

  Hélène was reluctant. ‘The band is due to begin playing.’

  Maynard fixed her with one of his quelling looks. ‘This won’t take a moment.’

  Hélène did as she was told. It was cold in Mr Charles’s office – which, as she understood it, was exactly the way he liked it. Opulence for the guests did not, she was often reminded, have to extend as far as those who ran the hotel.

  Maynard Charles drew a ledger book from one of the drawers beneath his desk, paged through it until he found the right section, and turned it around for Hélène to see. ‘I understand you’ve reserved the weekend of the fifteenth. Is that correct?’

  ‘I have . . . family plans,’ she said, stressing the word family as if it were a shameful thing.

  ‘I’m sensitive to my staff, Miss Marchmont. But, plans are written and rewritten. Graf and Gräfin Schecht, the Hamburg Schechts, are flying into London on the twelfth. They’ve taken the Continental Suite for eight nights.’ Maynard was about to close the ledger but, before he did, he took a pencil and ruler and scored a line directly through Hélène’s name. ‘Graf Schecht has requested you accompany him in the ballroom during his stay. It is, you recall, one of his rare London pleasures, to see you dance.’

  How could she forget? Graf Schecht was seventy years old, a whispery man of little grace but fierce determination. His wife, the Gräfin, had stopped dancing with him a generation ago – though she still enjoyed sitting in a ballroom and watching him twirl around someone much younger. Hélène could remember his hands all over her, and shuddered.

  ‘Mr Charles, I reserved those dates for a reason.’

  Maynard Charles nodded. ‘Be that as it may. Hélène, you won’t deny we’re always flexible where we can be. Good Lord, the board were flexible enough to grant you an entire year on sabbatical when you wanted to tour California. But now that you’re here with us, I really must insist—’

  ‘I can’t change things so easily,’ Hélène replied, her voice hardening. ‘This isn’t a—’

  Maynard Charles held up a hand and Hélène saw she was in for a lecture. ‘Graf and Gräfin Schecht have been patrons of this establishment longer than you or I have graced its halls. They are, as you understand, personal friends of Lord Edgerton. I don’t have to remind you of the choppy waters this hotel is sailing, Hélène. We pulled ourselves through the Depression by hook and by crook. With the good King Edward’s patronage, our reputation is restored. But that doesn’t mean . . . Trust me when I tell you, things can change in a moment. We court the great and the good so that this hotel’s reputation soars. Every time the King takes afternoon tea with us, I can tell in the ledgers the way this hotel thrives. Let us pray he sees sense and foregoes his infatuation with Mrs Simpson so that he may be king ever after. The hotel needs a benefactor like this. It is how we present ourselves to the world. That’s why we are throwing the New Year ball in his honour. That’s why we have the Queen of Norway and her retinue in attendance for the Yuletide season. And that’s why we need guests like the Hamburg Schechts. You must give them what they want, Hélène, for if we get a different kind of reputation, a reputation for cutting corners and letting our patrons down, well, worlds have imploded for less. There are twelve hundred members of staff in these halls, and do you know what? Not one of them is bigger than the hotel, Hélène. You do understand?’

  He phrased the last as a question, but in truth it was no question at all.

  ‘I understand.’ Hélène nodded, defeated, while inside she felt herself erupting.

  ‘Hélène, don’t be sore. You are one of this hotel’s most prized assets. I might even say you are the jewel in the Buckingham’s crown. To have you in our ballroom has been an untold delight for our patrons. Hélène Marchmont: the glamorous model who turned down the silver screen for the ballroom. It brings us an air o
f enchantment. I haven’t forgotten the season we opened and were suddenly indulged with guests from the Hollywood Hills, still courting you for their pictures. It means a tremendous amount to this establishment that you chose your love of dance over a shot at stardom. But, when our patrons need you, I need you, Hélène. With great beauty like yours, there comes a great responsibility.’

  Hélène was not listening. She had stopped listening after Mr Charles had called her a prized asset. I’m more than an asset, Maynard. I’m a woman. This hotel might be all you have in your life, but I have more in mine. And I needed those days.

  ‘Mr Charles, may I be excused?’

  Maynard nodded. ‘The Buckingham is greater for the sacrifices we make, Miss Marchmont,’ he said. But, by then, Hélène was already out of the door.

  *

  As the dancers prepared to fly out onto the ballroom floor, Raymond de Guise could see Hélène holding herself tensely. His hand was in hers, but it was as if she was in another world.

  ‘Hélène?’ he whispered. ‘Hélène, what happened?’

  ‘He took my weekend,’ she uttered, her voice tight with anger. ‘I’m to dance with the Schechts again, when I should be . . .’ No, Hélène, she told herself. Not a single tear. Not here. Not in front of my girls. ‘You know where I should be, Raymond. To Mr Charles, I’m just another prima donna artiste making demands. He thinks he bought my entire life, and all because of that year I was away. As if all I was doing was sunning myself in Los Angeles . . .’