Chapter Eighteen

ON A COLD OCTOBER MORNING, Frank was up before dawn. He had always liked this time of year, back in the north country, when the nights grew long and the morning cold made a fog of his breath each time he ventured out. London was much the same. Back home, you sensed the valleys and hills wake up by the settling of the bats in the attic, the morning song of the birds. Here, it was the dying of the street lamps, the stirring of the first buses that idled at their stops. The sounds and sensations of London, waking up.

Frank left the Brogan house when the youngest of the children were still sleeping. Roisin had been up in the night, tapping at his door and asking for a story, and consequently Frank was feeling sluggish himself. But the bracing walk along the river had roused him entirely by the time he was hurrying across the frosted green of St James’s Park.

Berkeley Square, too, was bejewelled in frost. Frank had to pause, just to absorb its breathtaking beauty. On the other side of the expanse, he could see Hodgson, one of the other pages, scuttling into the opening of Michaelmas Mews, so he knew he could not dally long. But the beauty of it made him want to dance. He skipped out across the lawns, feeling the crunch of the frost beneath his feet with every little shimmy and chassé he practised – until, aware of curtains twitching in one of the town houses above, he hurried into the hotel.

The girls were already flocking into the housekeeping lounge, but Rosa was waiting where she always did, at the end of the hallway, for him to arrive. Up ahead, he saw Nancy disappear through the door. She threw him a wave and, not for the first time, Frank cursed himself that he still hadn’t thought of what wedding gift he was going to get for her.

‘It ought to be simple,’ he’d lamented to Rosa, one night the previous week. ‘She’s my sister. I’ve known her all my life. But Nancy .?.?. she isn’t the sort of girl who wants.’

It had started to pain him. Nancy was the one who’d cleaned his knees when he fell over as a little boy. She was the one who’d cooked his meals and tucked him up in bed. But the wedding was mere months away, and he still didn’t know what to get her. Mrs Brogan was knitting them a winter blanket. Frank watched it coming together, piece by piece, each night. The girls in the chambermaids’ kitchen were clubbing together for a silver tea set, something Nancy could be proud of when she and Raymond set up home. But as for Frank, his mind was as empty as his pockets.

After checking the coast was clear, Rosa put her arms around Frank, squeezed him tight, and planted a kiss on both of his cheeks.

‘I’ve seen the continentals do it,’ she explained, with a grin.

‘I’m nervous, Rosa. I know I s-said I’d d-do it this m-morning, but now I’m not s-sure.?.?.’

‘Frank, your stutter’s coming back!’

‘It’s b-because I’m—’

‘You’ve no need to be nervous, Frankie. Look, he’s up there in his office now. Just go and give him a knock.’

She looked over her shoulder. The other girls were already in the housekeeping lounge. Only Ruth was still sauntering through. She smirked as Rosa leaned in to give Frank another kiss, for good luck.

‘That girl doesn’t know what she’s missing out on. How’re those dance lessons going with Billy?’

Frank’s face told a story for which no words would suffice: a crooked, crumpled kind of expression that spoke of entangled legs and bruises.

‘Me and Ansel had him at it last night. He’s got a good little box step. Anything trickier than that and .?.?.’ Frank shrugged.

‘Well, keep at it, and I’ll keep at Ruth. Those two just need a little encouragement.’ She didn’t sound convinced; neither was Frank. ‘Chin up, Frankie. You can do this! You’re a natural.’

Rosa always gave him courage. That was one of the things he liked the most about her – the ability she had to make him feel bigger, better than he thought he was. The bravery she’d given him was still pulsing in him as he hurried past the reception desks (where Billy was pontificating to some senior concierge on the best way to shine a shoe) and stole down the corridor towards Mr Charles’s office.

The door was ajar, and the sounds of business within. No matter how early the pages arose, a wise man would always wager that Maynard Charles was already hard at work, his hand on the hotel tiller. Billy said he never slept.

Before Frank’s courage deserted him, he tapped on the door.

Under his touch, it opened inches.

Maynard was hunched over his desk, making hurried amendments to some note he then pressed into a hotel envelope and sealed with a drop of wax, into which he pressed the signet ring he wore on his little finger. Something about the sight gave Frank a shudder, as if he’d stumbled upon some scandal being hidden away. But Frank had done jobs for Mr Charles in the past; he’d listened to Billy blather on about the ‘special work’ he and Mr Charles conducted. Whatever Maynard Charles was doing here, it had the air of one of these specific kinds of secret.

The hotel director’s eyes shot up. Nancy said he was an old darling, really, that he and Raymond had grown close over the passing years. Well, Frank did not see it that way. Maynard had a quelling eye, and it was focused on him right now.

‘Mr Nettleton, to what do I owe the pleasure?’

‘M-Mr Charles,’ Frank stammered, reaching deep inside himself to find his courage again. ‘It’s about the b-ballroom. You might think me impudent, s-sir, but I’ve s-something to ask.’

‘Well, out with it then, boy. I’ve a hotel to run. You’ll have errands to do yourself.’

‘I want to be a .?.?.’

Hotel dancer, he wanted to say. In the demonstrations. Just for a trial. So that, one day, I might prove myself. I might step out with Raymond de Guise and Hélène Marchmont, Mathilde Bourchier, Gene Sheldon and all of the rest.

But words had deserted him. He’d waited too long.

Maynard shook his head and said, ‘I have a job for you, Frank. Take this’ – and he gave Frank the sealed letter – ‘to the post room, straight away. It’s to go with the morning pick-up. Well, be off with you. Time waits for no man.’

‘Y-yes, sir.’ Frank nodded. ‘Straight away, sir.’

He cursed himself all the way down to the post room, a little office in the hotel basement, where the corridor was lined with a veritable battalion of traps designed to catch and slay the hotel’s rats.

If only the lords and ladies knew, Frank thought. Even the Buckingham Hotel has its rats .?.?.

Mrs Farrier, the post mistress, had a soft spot for Frank. A skeletal old bird, she had worked in the hotel post room since the latter years of the previous century. Her dominion, which existed for only an hour each morning and two each night, was a second world inside the Buckingham. The little office walls were a shrine to her children and manifold grandchildren, and there was always a posy of flowers by the typewriter on her desk. Mrs Farrier might have been a strange subterranean soul, but she took her work seriously and the pride she took in it was second only to Maynard Charles’s.

‘All the secrets and innermost lives of our guests pass through here,’ she had once told Frank, while she offered him a piece of shortbread and a glass of cordial. ‘And what do I know of those lives? Not a thing! Because privacy is a guest’s fundamental and absolute right. You might think my job is just to put envelopes in sacks and wait for a Royal Mail officer to pick them up – but you couldn’t be more wrong. My job is nothing more than a guardian to their innermost lives.’

Today, as Frank listened to the usual spiel, he offered up Mr Charles’s envelope and said, ‘I’m really just here for this, Mrs Farrier. Mr Charles says it’s to go with the morning pick-up.’

Mrs Farrier took the envelope, looked at the address, and added it religiously to one of her grey sacks.

‘An honour, young Frank,’ she said, before turning back to her work.

Sometimes – just sometimes – it would be nice if the folks around here didn’t treat him like he was an eight-year-old scamp, getting under their feet. That was how Mr Charles thought of him, he supposed.

There was one person who understood, though. One person who had come from a beginning just as insignificant and, through hard work and determination – and no small modicum of talent – had taken a step into a different world.

Yes, he thought, Raymond would understand.

*

In the Buckingham Hotel, different folks had different rhythms, and the lights did not ordinarily turn on in the studio behind the Grand Ballroom until mid-morning. By then, Frank had already been sent out for fresh flowers by the hotel’s visiting florist and run two errands for M. Etienne Caron, residing with them for a week to attend the Covent Garden Art Fair. Only when he got a moment to breathe did he venture to the little studio behind the Grand, where Raymond and Hélène had come together to prepare for the afternoon’s demonstration.

Poor Miss Marchmont. Now that Frank knew her story, there seemed something inestimably sad about her. She carried it like a shroud. The chambermaids had been talking; they said it was like a cloud following her around the hotel.

‘Infectious,’ one of them had said before Rosa upbraided her, ‘like a common cold.’

But Frank knew that joy was infectious, too. She only had to catch it again.

For a time, he was content to watch the rehearsal. None of the dancers minded. They were used to him lingering here. Probably half of them thought he had his head in the clouds, chasing some impossible dream. But Frank was heartened to see Ansel there, practising some move with Karina Kainz. And when Raymond wandered over to him, at a break in the rehearsal, he tried to battle back how downcast he’d become.

‘I plucked up the courage, Raymond. Did what Rosa’s been egging me on to do. Went to Mr Charles, thinking I might ask him for a chance in the demonstrations and—’

‘He said no?’

‘It’s worse than that,’ grumped Frank. ‘I started stuttering again. Lost all my words. He sent me away with a flea in my ear. They don’t take me seriously, Raymond. They think I’m .?.?.’

Raymond paused. A look had flickered across his face that put Frank in mind of some little victory being won, or an idea being born.

‘What about this, Frank? In two months’ time, when the Christmas spirit is already in the air, Nancy and I will be up in Marylebone, exchanging our vows. And after that, well .?.?.’

He put an arm around Frank and guided him through the studio door, up through the dressing rooms and to the doors leading out onto the Grand Ballroom itself. There, together, they looked up at the cavernous expanse of an empty ballroom. To Frank, all the music, all the promise, just throbbed in the air. If he closed his eyes, he could already see the grandeur.

‘We’ll be here, Frank, courtesy of Mr Charles and the board. I’m quite sure Mr Hastings had something to do with this – but, for a day, the ballroom will be ours alone. And Frank .?.?.’ He beamed, proudly. ‘You could dance.’

Frank peered up at him.

‘Nancy and I will dance alone. We’ve already chosen the song – Archie’s own ‘Bride to Be’. But then, before we invite everyone to the floor, I thought there could be a show. The Winter Hollers will still be with us. Mathilde and Gene and Hélène, too. Well, what if you were to dance as well? Mr Charles wouldn’t have to sanction it, not on my wedding day. If Rosa doesn’t mind, you might dance with Mathilde. Everyone would see you, Frank. With a closed ballroom, we could dance to whatever music we liked – no more stately waltzes and foxtrots! You could jitterbug. You could jive. And when they saw you, why, there isn’t a soul on earth who’d say you weren’t worth a chance in this ballroom. They’d see you for what you are, Frank Nettleton – born to dance!’

Frank was still staring, goggle-eyed, into the ballroom.

‘Do you really think it might work?’

‘Trust me. We’d have to smarten you up a little. You’re good – you know that – but in the ballroom you have to be great. We might have to sprinkle some stardust. But five minutes on this floor could change the course of your life.’

With his arm still around Frank’s shoulders, Raymond shepherded him back to the studio. A wild tango was playing on the gramophone, as Hélène fell in and out of hold with Jonas Holler, and Mathilde was corpsing with laughter as she watched. Hélène was laughing, too. It was good, thought Frank, to see her laugh.

‘You’ll need to choreograph a routine, of course, Frank. I’ll have a word with Mathilde.’

‘Maybe I could meet her this afternoon?’ said Frank, realising too late how overeager he’d become.

‘She’ll be rehearsing the opening number for this evening. Friday nights in the Grand – they may not be as spectacular as Saturdays, but the ballroom’s going to be thronged. The Duke of Coburg and his entourage are checking in, even now. Of course, I myself have a night away from the ballroom planned. Let the Winter Hollers reign supreme for a time.’ Raymond paused. ‘Perhaps you should work a little out yourself, and then, when I’ve spoken with Mathilde, we can get things in motion. Two months, Frank, to design a dance to make your dreams come true.’

When Raymond said it, it sounded like the quest for the Holy Grail itself. Inwardly, Frank beamed. Already, his mind was blossoming with possibilities.

‘Design a dance?’

The voice had come from Ansel Albrecht, who was now sitting on the edge of the studio floor. Picking himself up, he joined Frank in the doorway, as Raymond returned to the fray.

‘I’m to dance at the wedding.’ Frank grinned. He’d rarely felt a thrill like this. ‘With Mathilde, if she’ll let me. Then I can show them what I’m made of.’ His voice dropped to a low whisper. ‘Raymond thinks I’ve got a chance. That I might be like you, Ansel.’

‘But, Frank!’ Ansel thrilled. ‘This is wonderful!’

It’s too wonderful, thought Frank. Too wonderful to be true.

‘And on my sister’s wedding day as well.’

Ansel smothered him in his arms and Frank, laughing, squirmed until he let go.

‘You could help.’ Frank was grinning. ‘I mean, we’re not getting anywhere with poor Billy, are we? He could practise his box step in the corner, and we could be—’

‘Making up a dance to change your life!’

On the studio floor, a bank of puzzled faces turned, as one, to look upon the two excitable boys in the corner. Jonas Holler and Karina Kainz shared a smile.

‘Would you?’ asked Frank.

Ansel barely needed to take breath before he said, ‘But of course. I’ve been trying to lend my ideas to Mr Schank and the company ever since they brought me aboard. I was choreographing my mama in the kitchen at home since I was knee-high.’ His face darkened and he screwed it up, in imitation of a little boy who’s been told he must eat no more biscuits before dinner. ‘Of course, it is not my place, not with the Winter Hollers. But perhaps, if they were to see me, choreographing something spectacular for you .?.?. Maybe, then, we would both get what we want!’

Both boys looked at each other with eyes opened wide and hearts beating wildly. Then, laughing with the triumphs they had not yet achieved, they shook hands.

‘This afternoon?’ whispered Frank. ‘After the demonstrations?’

Ansel shook his head. ‘I cannot. I must write to my father. It’s been too long, and .?.?. there’s news I must tell him.’ The way Ansel had said the word ‘news’ gave it a graveness that Frank did not really understand. ‘But tonight – when the ballroom is in full flow? I’m not to dance this evening. Mr Schank has me resting. He thinks I am not strong like the others – but we’ll show him, Frank! I’ll meet you back here, when the band starts playing. By midnight, we’ll have the magic in flow.’

Frank nodded eagerly – and, with the thought of their very own quest taking shape in his head, hurried back to his work in the hotel.

*

By mid-afternoon, Frank’s errands were done. Ordinarily, he and Rosa would go for a stroll along Regent Street – but today, with winter approaching and twilight already threatening by three o’clock, they buried themselves in the big armchairs of the chambermaids’ kitchenette, dreaming up what present they might get for Nancy.

‘Of course, she still hasn’t settled on her dress. Raymond said he would buy her anything she wanted from the boutiques we visited. But your sister, she doesn’t know what she wants.’

All of a sudden, Frank had an idea.

‘Maybe that’s what I could get her, Rosa – a wedding dress!’

Rosa’s eyes goggled. ‘Frank, you wouldn’t know where to start!’

But he did.

‘Back at the Brogans .?.?. Mrs Gable sent down my old trunk, from back home. All my books and toys and .?.?.’ He had flushed red, because he certainly did not want Rosa thinking of him as a little boy, like the rest in the Buckingham. ‘There’s a lining in that old trunk. Silk. Silk from my mother’s old wedding dress.’

Rosa’s face lit up. ‘Well, that would be wonderful, Frank – trust you to think of something like that! She’d love that, our Nance. We’ve had her trekking round the boutiques, but no matter how fancy the dress, it’s never quite the one. But something with all that history, with all that meaning.’

Frank felt full to bursting. This day, which had started so badly, was somehow overflowing with possibilities.

‘I’m going to take a look, as soon as I’m back tonight. I could ask Mrs Moffatt to help me with a seamstress. She’s bound to want to help.’

Rosa made tea and toast, and soon the other girls were coming back in, wearied from their day in and out of the hotel suites.

‘Hey, look, Frank,’ Rosa said, and pointed at the clock on the wall. ‘Hadn’t you better get going? You don’t want to keep Ansel waiting. He’ll think you’ve stood him up.’

The clock was already inching towards seven. Downstairs, the Grand would be coming alive. To think that, one day soon, he too might be striding out onto the dance floor, perhaps even taking some lady or crown princess in his arms. What was it Raymond had said? Nobody could deny him a chance, not when they saw him on the ballroom floor.

He leaned over and gave Rosa a peck on the cheek, to shrieks of delight from the other girls. Then he loped out of the kitchenette, buzzing with the promise of everything to come. Was it really only last year that he’d got off the train at Euston, to be dazzled by the sights and sounds of the Buckingham Hotel? Could it really be him, Frank Nettleton, who’d just walked away from his sweetheart, off to divine a dance that might change the future of his life? It was mysterious the way the world kept turning.

And what was more, in all of this talk of the future, he hadn’t once thought of the Continent. He hadn’t once thought of war. This alone was cause for celebration.

Frank came helter-skelter down the service stairs, too impatient to wait for a lift. If he’d been any more giddy, he might have leaped onto one of the banisters and tried to sail his way down. In mere moments, he had reached the bottom, and was about to scuttle down to the studio doors when a commotion from the reception hall drew his eye.

Guests were cascading down into the Grand Ballroom. Maynard Charles stood at the desk, with a look like pure thunder in his eyes. But among the men in their evening jackets and the ladies in their long, flowing gowns, Frank saw others: an ambulance man, dressed in his blue wool uniform and cap; a much older man, whom Frank recognised as the Buckingham’s visiting physician, Dr Evelyn Moore.

Billy was there too. He appeared at the reception desk, opened his eyes wide in a silent plea to Frank, and marched purposefully off, around the golden guest lift and towards the guest stairs.

Frank followed.

There was a crowd here, too. At the foot of the guest stairs, one of the taciturn senior concierges stood sentry, allowing no guests to pass – while, up above, a group gathered on the first landing. Frank got closer, ducked under the arm of the concierge and loped a little up the steps. Something seemed to be drawing him on to whatever spectacle this was – not just Billy, who had gone before him, but something else, something deep inside him.

All the joy that had been building in him since breakfast was gone. He felt an emptiness creeping through him.

Mrs Moffatt was here. So was Maximilian Schank, from the Winter Holler Company. It wasn’t until Frank got close that he realised there was another ambulance man, dressed in the same woollen blue, here as well – nor that a duo of other concierges had been stationed on the staircase above, directing guests to the lifts instead of the final flight of stairs.

‘Billy,’ he whispered, mere steps away now, ‘what happened?’

Billy was unable to form a single word.

That was when Frank knew something irrecoverable had occurred. He had never known Billy Brogan speechless before.

He took another step up, vaguely heard Mrs Moffatt telling him to get away, to give the ambulance men the space they needed. But the ambulance man looked up, told Mrs Moffatt that it was all right, that there was nothing more they could do.

‘He would have died straight away,’ the ambulance man intoned. ‘The moment he fell. Poor bugger landed badly, that’s all. Such a waste. Such a crying shame.’

Frank looked past them, at the place on the stairs where a fallen body lay.

It was all angles and points. An arm was outstretched, a face buried in the carpet.

Frank couldn’t see the face, but he knew already who was lying dead on the stairs.

The fallen body belonged to no other than Ansel Albrecht.