Chapter Nine

MIDSUMMER’S NIGHT WAS A LONG time in coming. Hélène danced with guests in the ballroom. She put on the show, as always she did, making them feel talented and proud, able – by tricks of posture and bearing – to make it seem as if even the decrepit old Graf K?nig, visiting from his Bavarian estates, was gliding on air. She did it all with a smile, because that was what she’d been practising her whole life.

But, by midsummer’s night, Hélène was tired, more tired than she’d ever been before.

Today, when the demonstration dances were done for the afternoon, she retreated to a corner of the dressing rooms and took from her clutch bag the letter she’d been clinging to all week. It was a short thing, perhaps abrupt, the culmination of weeks of courage and self-control. As the girls fanned out around them, Hélène dared to lift the letter to her lips and breathe in its musty pinewood scent. No doubt the girls around her thought she was breathing in the scent of some lover. None among them knew it was a letter from home, with all the scents of her childhood kneaded into its grain. Nobody here knew it came from her Aunt Lucy, telling her that they accepted her invitation; that tonight she and Hélène’s own mother would visit the Buckingham Hotel and dine in the Candlelight Club. The thought was so fragile that she hadn’t even confided in Louis Kildare.

Presently, Raymond appeared. He’d taken off the charcoal-grey tail-suit jacket he’d worn earlier and, with his collar undone, he looked almost as if he didn’t belong here. Yet, even as relaxed as he was, there was something effortless about Raymond’s elegance. Hélène wondered if the man had ever felt as knotted inside as she did now. Everyone had secrets to preserve, but tonight she felt hers more keenly than ever.

‘Perhaps we should rehearse again, Miss Marchmont,’ he said, with a courteous smile that drew the attention of the other girls instead. Honestly, the way they made eyes at him! Hélène had a mind to grab hold of them and tell them that there was a world beyond the ballroom, that they ought to go out and live, live, live, before something came in to sweep it all away.

She had already crammed the letter back into her clutch bag and was up on her feet by the time she replied. It was, she admitted to herself – and she chastened herself immediately for being so unkind – difficult to see Raymond floating on air, his head full of thoughts of his wedding, when everything inside her was hardening to stone.

‘Raymond, we’ll work wonders tonight – but I can’t rehearse, not again. I need to rest. I can feel it in my body.’

The smile left Raymond’s face. ‘Hélène, are you .?.?. ?’

‘I’m fine,’ she promised him, and laughed. ‘We’re just not as young as we used to be.’

‘Oh, Hélène, we’re in the prime of our lives!’

She grinned. ‘You’ll always be in your prime. Won’t he, girls?’

And as Mathilde and the other girls gathered around, each wondering if they might take Hélène’s place and rehearse with him this afternoon instead, Hélène quietly slipped away. From now, until the twilight settled over Berkeley Square, there would just be Hélène and her letter. Sometimes, all you really needed was a few quiet hours where you didn’t have to pretend.

*

Hélène’s mother and aunt were already in the Candlelight Club when she arrived, just as the afternoon was paling towards night. The doors of the Candlelight Terrace were still open, the balcony gardens heady with the scent of the summer blossoms. And there they were, sitting at a table by the open terrace doors.

Hélène stilled, lingering in the shadows where she might not immediately be seen. The Candlelight Club was both a cosy spot for an evening aperitif, complete with private booths and cubbyholes where guests could gather, and a stylish modern lounge, with a smooth mahogany bar that ran around the room’s circumference. Hélène’s heart had constricted as soon as she saw them sitting there, for she’d asked Ramon, the head waiter, to reserve one of the candlelit cubbyholes instead, some place where their conversation might go on undisturbed. And yet, there they were, in the heart of the club itself.

Marie looked smaller, somehow, than Hélène remembered. She was quite certain that four years could not do that to a woman, so perhaps it was some trick of her imagination, making her remember her mother as she’d seen her when she was a girl – for that was the only way she liked to remember her at all, back before recrimination and regret.

At Marie’s side was Aunt Lucy and, to Hélène, she looked the same as ever she had. Lucy had the same white-blonde hair that Hélène had been fortunate enough to inherit but, where Hélène wore hers short, Lucy’s was a waterfall reaching the small of her back. Hélène had inherited the same regal height as Lucy too. They had the same slender wrists, the same dazzling eyes. Lucy had been beautiful, once. That she’d remained unmarried was an oddity that nobody in the family had ever been able to understand.

Hélène reached the table and waited, nervously, until they looked up.

‘Hélène,’ Lucy stuttered, as soon as she saw her. ‘Oh, my dear Hélène .?.?.’

That was the thing that made Hélène crumble – Aunt Lucy’s voice; she hadn’t heard it in years. You could only keep voices in your memory for so long. After that, they fluttered away. Hearing it now, she realised how much she’d forgotten. That fragility in the way the voice wavered; that strength in the way it held true: was ever a thing more of a Marchmont trait than this?

‘Aunt Lucy,’ she said, formally – and though Lucy seemed ready to take her niece in her arms, the brittle way Hélène held herself kept her at bay. ‘Mother,’ she said, turning.

‘Hélène,’ her mother ventured, in a tone so much more measured than Lucy’s, a voice uncertain of what it was going to say, and how. ‘You look well, my dear.’

‘Isn’t it beautiful here?’ Lucy went on, if only to fill the silence that threatened to envelop them all. By now, Marie had risen to her feet too, and together the three women stood around the table, facing the darkening light over Berkeley Square. ‘All these flowers, I’ve never seen the like!’ Lucy continued. ‘Do you remember, Hélène, how your mother and father stayed here once? I’ve been longing to come here ever since – and now, here I am.’

It was a legend in the family, Hélène remembered. Her father had stayed at luxurious hotels all over the Continent – and, indeed, had taken his young wife (his second, after his first died young), to the Paris Ritz on the first night of their honeymoon. But, in those days, he’d kept a pied-à-terre on Baker Street and the thought of staying in a London hotel had always seemed a decadence too far. The night they’d stayed at the Buckingham had, Hélène recalled, been the night of Marie’s birthday, when Hélène was younger than Sybil was now. It held such a special place in their memories that, when Hélène first announced she was to join the new Grand Ballroom there, it had seemed the most perfect synchronicity of their lives.

But of course, thought Hélène, they could have come at any time in the last few years.

Sir Derek and Lady Marchmont had more than enough social standing to have graced the Grand on a Saturday night, or to have dined in the Queen Mary Restaurant. That they hadn’t done so was deliberate. Every day was just another decision to stay away.

‘Why don’t we sit?’ Lucy asked.

‘Tell me,’ Hélène began, ‘how did you come to be seated here? I’d reserved one of the corners, where we could—’

‘Oh, Hélène,’ Marie chimed in. ‘Why a dark corner when there’s the beauty of the terrace to look out on? I sat here with your father, you know. Why come at all, if we’re just to sit in a corner?’

Why indeed?thought Hélène – and the idea crept into her head that they’d have been better off at Simpson’s in the Strand. The strength she’d sought to draw from being here, in her own world, seemed suddenly lacking.

So she sat down.

It was tentative at first. There was so much that could not be said that the silences stretched long. Avoiding any mention of Sir Derek, they spoke about the Candlelight Club itself. They talked their way through the cocktail menu, as if this was the most important thing on earth. The conversation wandered to the Grand, and the stories Lucy had read in the society pages about the debonair dancing star Raymond de Guise, still being courted – or so the tittle-tattle said – to go to California and become a star of the silver screen.

When Hélène told them that Raymond had resolved to remain at the Buckingham, and that he was doing it all in the name of true love – for he’d lost his heart to a chambermaid, and asked her to be his wife – Marie arched one of her eyebrows and said, ‘Well, love will make a man do the most foolish things. You’d have thought a man like this Mr de Guise might have found a chambermaid a bit beneath him, don’t you think?’

‘Is that so?’ said Hélène.

She hadn’t meant to say it so severely, but by the looks of the couple on one of the neighbouring tables, she’d spoken louder than she’d thought.

She lowered her voice. ‘Do you know, Mother, I sometimes wonder what a person with an attitude like that can know about love at all. Deference, yes, and obligation, certainly. But love? It crosses boundaries, doesn’t it? It crosses worlds. And isn’t that how it’s meant to be?’

‘Hélène, my dear,’ her mother began, ‘I know how angry you must be. That isn’t why we came. We don’t want anger. We just want .?.?.’

It was on the tip of Hélène’s tongue to start talking about Sidney, and all that she’d sacrificed to be with him. Not her inheritance, but the love of her family, the love of her father, the sense of belonging and home that she used to have – all of it, she’d given away freely, so that she could be with him. Everywhere she looked, people were swooning over Raymond de Guise. How wonderful it was, they all said, that he’d given up the chance of a life in the sun, Hollywood glamour and style, for Nancy Nettleton. Well, what did they know of sacrifice? When you scarcely saw your daughter so that you could pay for her to live a good life, when you’d forsaken the very family that reared you because they couldn’t stoop to give the man you loved a chance – Hélène knew about ‘sacrifice’ all too well.

She was growing too hard. Very consciously, she tried to settle herself. But the clock on the wall was ticking, counting down the hour until she had to return to the Grand, and there was still so much she wanted to say.

She reached into her clutch bag and brought out a small leather folder. Unbuckling the clasp, she set it down on the table and opened it up, to reveal within a little book of portraits, taken by the photographer at his studio on Clapham Common. They were nearly a year old now – how quickly the time flew by! – but, in each of them, Sybil sat delicately in Hélène’s lap, against a succession of backdrops depicting Venice, London, and a beautiful glittering seaside cove.

‘Mother, this is your granddaughter.’

Marie produced a pair of spectacles – she’d never worn spectacles before – and balanced them on her nose. Then, with an impassive face, she looked over the pictures.

‘She looks like you, Hélène,’ she finally said.

‘She does not.’ Hélène smiled. ‘She looks like Sidney.’

There was stony silence.

‘And how are you finding motherhood?’

‘I can’t lie to you both. It hasn’t been easy. A pregnancy in secret. A life lived the same way. After Sidney died, I thought – how easily one falls from grace. There was I, one year, dancing in the Grand Ballroom and holidaying with you each summer in Nice. And by New Year – pregnant and alone, and faced with—’ She stopped, if only to gather herself. ‘I’d thought to take lodgings in Lambeth. Somewhere to have my baby alone. But I hadn’t counted on the kindness of Noelle and Maurice. They’re Sidney’s parents. They gave me a home, while I had my daughter. Mr Charles was convinced easily enough. I made it known I’d been invited to California, to audition for the screen – and the chance of this hotel having given rise to a new star, what that might do for the ballroom’s reputation, was too much for him to ignore. But I wasn’t in California. I was on Brixton Hill, giving birth to my Sybil.’ She stopped. ‘I wrote to you, of course. You never replied.’

‘Hélène, you must know it hasn’t been easy for us either—’

‘Easy for you?’ Hélène seethed. ‘Look at her! She’s your .?.?.’ Remembering herself and where she was, she brought her voice down to a low whisper. She’d been a fool, to bring them here. But everywhere else – Simpson’s or Kettner’s, the places they used to go – spoke of them; here, at the Buckingham, was Hélène’s alone. ‘She’s beautiful, and she’s funny, and she deserves so much more than I’ve been able to give her.’

She trembled. Lucy reached across to take her hand and, although some instinct told Hélène to wrench it away, she let her. Always, inside her, those two forces: to cling on, or to simply let go.

‘How is my father?’ she finally whispered.

‘He’s surviving,’ Marie replied. She said it with a ferocity that was not meant for Hélène, but only in defiance of the forces that were snatching her husband away from her, one day at a time. ‘His lungs are old. His heart is strong, as yours is, Hélène, but it beats too slowly now. The pneumonia he lived through, but the damage is done. Parts of him are giving up. Some days, he gets out of bed. Others, we take him soup and read to him. He’s dying, Hélène. There’s no defeating what’s coming.’

Silence, all around. Hélène did not know how to feel, and this was the most perplexing thing of all – because neither sadness, nor relief, swept over her now; just a long, echoing emptiness, like the Grand Ballroom after the last waltzes were danced.

‘Does he know you’re here?’ she finally asked.

‘Not yet, Hélène,’ said Lucy, with a more consoling tone. ‘We thought – perhaps you didn’t want to see us. Or perhaps, when you did, you’d realise you never wanted to again. His heart is old, and we did not think it could take the disappointment.’

‘Disappointment?’ Hélène breathed. ‘His disappointment?’

‘I meant to say, if you didn’t want to visit him one last time, before he—’

‘So it’s all on me,’ Hélène laughed, with a bitter tone. ‘All these years, every day a chance to come and see me, to come and make up for what he did. And yet it’s all up to me whether he gets to die forgiven or—’

‘Hélène,’ Lucy began, when her mother turned her face away, brittle with tears, ‘we didn’t want to upset you. Look at you. Look what a life you’ve made! It must have been so hard, doing it alone.’

‘I haven’t done it alone,’ she said. ‘Sybil does have a family who love her. Her father’s family.’

‘Hélène Marchmont,’ her mother interjected. ‘That was poisonous.’

It really wasn’t, thought Hélène. Acknowledging the love Sidney’s parents had shown her, while acknowledging the love she’d lacked from her own, wasn’t an attack; it was only an observation.

‘What do you want from us, Hélène?’

‘Want?’ snapped Hélène. ‘Mother, I gave up wanting years ago.’

‘Well, what would you have me do? He’s an old man. He deserves his fitting end, doesn’t he? To go off into the great unknown, having seen you one last time. He cherished you, Hélène. Don’t you remember that?’

‘I do,’ she whispered, ‘and that’s why it hurts. That’s why it hurts more than you can know. That you all – all three of you’ – and she turned her shoulder on even Lucy – ‘locked the door on us. She was an unborn child.’

‘Hélène, you’re painting it all wrong. We came here to put all this behind us, not to dredge it up. We all deserve that chance, don’t we?’

‘Not if you can’t face it, Mother.’

‘You were raised in a good Christian household, Hélène. You were raised to understand forgiveness. And don’t you dare tell me it’s only us who need forgiving. You played your part in it too, as I remember. So we can let bygones be bygones and you can come and do this service for your dying father, or we can—’

‘Service?’ Hélène gasped.

‘Now, Marie,’ Lucy interjected, placing a hand on both of their forearms, ‘that wasn’t what we said, was it? Hélène, we didn’t come to force you. You’re a strong woman, and you’re not to be forced. We came only to see if there was some crack left open, a place where the light might get in, somewhere that there might be just a little hope that some good might come out of this, after all this time.’

Even now, Lucy looked hopeful.

‘I would have thought it might begin with an apology,’ said Hélène – and, feeling sure of herself now, feeling certain what she wanted, she drew herself up high. ‘An apology for throwing out your only daughter, for no sin other than that she’d fallen in love. An apology for disowning your unborn grandchild, and all because—’

‘Oh, Hélène!’ screamed Lady Marchmont, and as she turned suddenly in her seat, her cuff caught her cocktail glass and sent gin and vermouth splashing over the table. ‘Listen to yourself! You’re as sanctimonious as you used to be precocious! Your father didn’t disown you because he’s an evil man. He’s a good man. He’s the very best of us. He loved you, Hélène, more than you could ever know. But you broke his heart, you sorry girl. You broke his heart on the day you came home to tell him you were having a black man’s baby!’

Silence.

There was silence in the Candlelight Club.

Every eye was on them. Every guest, every drinker, every waiter. Up at the bar, Ramon and Diego, the cocktail waiter, stared. Aunt Lucy stared. And Hélène Marchmont herself, feeling the pressure of countless eyes boring into her, stared on in silence, as her mother’s exclamation echoed all around.

In the emptiness, Hélène’s eyes lifted to the clock hanging above the terrace door.

‘Mother, I am needed in the ballroom,’ she said with breathless eloquence.

Then she was up and on her heels, marching back across the silence of the Candlelight Club, down, down, down through the Buckingham’s layers, and across the black and white chequers of the reception hall – where Billy, who had once learned the very same secret rippling out across the hotel, watched with a curious gaze as she disappeared around the back of the ballroom and into the dressing rooms.

The troupe was already gathered for the evening’s delights. Hélène had wanted to find Louis Kildare, but she had come too late, for the Archie Adams Orchestra had already taken their places on stage. Quickly she began to get changed.

As soon as she was done, Raymond rushed up to her and took her by the hand.

‘Thank goodness. I was beginning to think I’d have to ask Mathilde to step into the breach.’ He paused, sensing her rigidity. All elegance, all poise, had seemingly deserted Hélène Marchmont. ‘Are you unwell?’

Out in the Grand Ballroom, the band had struck up, a fervent blast of piano and trombone.

‘It’s nothing,’ she said, as, statuesque, she walked with Raymond to the head of the column of dancers, ready to go through the doors.

‘Something’s wrong. I know that there is. I can feel it in your body. Whatever it is, you’re holding it in. Hélène? You’ve got to let it out—’

She shook her head, squeezed his hand, commanded him to stop asking by the tear-filled look of her eyes.

‘Let’s dance,’ she said – and, in that same moment, the doors opened up, the ballroom crowd put up a roar of applause, and out they twirled, Raymond de Guise and Hélène Marchmont, gliding out across the gilded dance floor as if that was the only thing that mattered in all of the world.