Chapter Twenty-six

THE SLEEPER TRAIN HAD REACHED the chalky expanses of the Chiltern Hills, but in the cramped compartment, Artie Cohen was not interested in sleeping. Two hours ago, they’d left behind a London cosying up beneath a fairytale covering of snow, and in the bunk beneath him, Raymond was studiously trying to get some sleep. But not his brother. Artie sat, with his legs dangling over the edge of the bunk, and his flask of hot rum and sugar in one hand. Every now and again, he rubbed at the porthole windows with his cuff, clearing away the condensation so he could see the crystalline snowscape outside. The train kept stopping, grinding forward for another few miles and then stopping again – no doubt as the brave guards got out to clear the track of a particularly troublesome drift of snow – but even this was to Artie’s liking. He began to sing:

‘Heaven, I’m in heaven! And my heart beats so that I can hardly speeeee-aaaaaa-kkk!’

A hand shot out of the bottom bunk, grabbed Artie by the shin, and pulled him so that he toppled to the ground.

‘Ow!’ Artie roared, staggering to keep himself upright. ‘What was that for?’

‘You were murdering one of my favourite songs.’

Raymond emerged from the bottom bunk, rubbing his weary eyes.

‘You’re really not going to let me sleep, are you?’

‘Ray, I told you before – this isn’t a sleepy little trip we’re going on. This is an adventure. This is for old times! This is .?.?. my wedding present to you!’

Raymond looked around, taking in the entirety of the cramped compartment in a fraction of a second. Then he rolled his eyes at Artie.

‘Have a drink with me, brother.’ Artie thrust the flask towards Raymond’s hands. ‘Just one night, you and me. Blackpool, Ray!’

Raymond considered the flask with a sense of dissatisfaction.

‘I know it’s not Mo?t, but it’ll be fun. Ray Cohen, you don’t fool me. You have all your fancy airs, all your graces, your dashing new name – but you still use the same water closet as the rest of us. You still get dandruff in that beautiful black hair o’ yours. And you still—’

Raymond snatched the flask and took a drink. ‘Yes, I heard you, Artie.’

‘Then that’s settled,’ Artie grinned. ‘The Cohen boys are going on a voyage!’

Outside, fat flakes of snow drifted peacefully down.

*

By midnight, they were grinding their way through the Midlands. By the small hours, they were sitting in a railway siding somewhere north of Manchester while the coal tender was decoupled and a full one loaded. Outside, the serenity of the snow was in stark contrast to the roars of laughter and stories being told inside the carriage. Stories of their first nights, following their father into the dance halls (and realising what a man about town he was when their mother wasn’t looking). Stories of their scrapes with the Marlowe boys from the other side of Stepney Green. Stories about Mara, the girl they’d both chased – back when they were just little kids. Every story, full of joy. They did not touch on the sad times tonight: Artie in Pentonville, while Ray cantered across the Continent with Georges de la Motte. In the little sleeping compartment, they existed in their own little bubble in time.

‘It’s good to see you up and on your feet, Artie,’ said Ray, as the train took off again, the looming outline of the Peak District – a horizon of glistening white – somewhere off to the east. ‘I’ve not known you as happy in years.’

It was purpose that brought it out of him, thought Raymond.

The Daughters of Salvation wasn’t just saving the needy and destitute of Whitechapel; it had saved Artie Cohen as well.

‘Aye, well, it’s good to have something to do,’ said Artie, as if he would rather talk about anything else.

‘This business with Vivienne .?.?.’

Artie raised his eyebrows. ‘What of it?’

Raymond shrugged. The snow moved hypnotically against the windows.

‘Things will change, I suppose. Nancy’s upset that Vivienne didn’t confide in her. They used to be so close.’

It had taken Raymond some time to wheedle out of Nancy why she was feeling so sore, some nights ago. They’d stepped out together, for dinner on the Strand – and, walking home, through snowbound London, he’d asked her what was wrong. Nancy wasn’t used to not being trusted. She felt it like a bruised heart.

‘You know Viv.’ Artie shrugged. ‘A law to herself, that one. Does what she wants when she wants it, or not at all.’ He paused. ‘I think she thought your Nance deserved a little time just for herself. Viv’s dumped enough problems on her over the years. Maybe she thought it wasn’t right to bring another .?.?.’ Artie yawned. ‘But we must only be a few hours from Blackpool. We’re really going to need to get some shut-eye. I can’t stay up, jawing with you all night.’

Raymond didn’t have an answer to that. He looked at Artie with an inscrutable expression, was about to remind him whose idea this sleeper carriage tipple had been .?.?.

But Artie Cohen had already toppled backwards, into the bed.

He was already fast asleep.

*

Blackpool at dawn: the frigid air coming in from the sea, the sound of hungry seagulls wheeling overhead. Raymond and Artie had staggered from the sleeper carriage with their heads betraying the first savagery of the hangovers to come, and as they reeled out of the station, Raymond felt a roiling in his belly. How Artie was still standing upright, he did not know.

‘That’s too much champagne and caviar for you, that is.’ Artie clapped him on the back as they dragged their suitcases through the station door. ‘If you’d started on grog like me, you’d be better prepared.’

‘I’m never drinking again,’ moaned Raymond.

‘Only a nice glass of Mo?t,’ Artie returned.

This early in the morning, the North Pier was quiet. Only a few old men braved the winter chill to potter with their dogs, up and down the promenade. Along the Golden Mile, the attractions that drew in day-trippers all summer long stood as silent sentries against the winter. The Blackpool Tower, as imposing as the Tour Eiffel after which it was modelled, was a lattice of ice, reaching into a sky still pregnant with the promise of more to come. The fairground attractions wore crowns of white. Great drifts of snow had grown up around the carousels. And there, sitting on the leeward side of the tower, were the rooftops of the Winter Gardens themselves.

‘There you have it, Ray. We’ll be dancing there tonight. Told you I’d show you a good time!’

Raymond had been here a few times before, with Georges. He remembered walking into the Empress Ballroom for the first time, his eyes drawn up to the barrel-vaulted ceiling with all its delicately patterned panels, the twelve glass chandeliers that spilled glittering light all over the dance floor below. It had been the first time Raymond danced on a sprung floor, the first time he felt the sensation of soaring as he waltzed. They’d replaced the floor in the ten years since he’d last been here. Ten thousand pieces of mahogany and walnut had been intricately interleaved; a new stage had been built, a new Wurlitzer organ hoisted into its place.

He was so caught up in his memory that he didn’t see, until it was nearly too late, that Artie had doubled over beside one of the drifts of snow.

‘That rum’s catching up with me, Ray. Dirty stuff. You should never have made me drink it.’

Raymond laughed. ‘We’ll find a hotel. There’s a place Georges and I once stayed, overlooking the seafront somewhere north of here. A beautiful boutique little place – you’d think it a little corner of the Buckingham itself, uprooted and brought here.’

Artie craned around, looking up at him with a sickly grimace. Against the stark white of the snow, his face looked a lurid shade of green.

‘You won’t catch me in one of your fancy gaffs, Ray. No,’ he grinned, ‘this isn’t the “de Guise” show. This is the Cohen boys, on the weekend of their lifetimes. We’re staying some place that’s right for the Cohens, not the de Guises. I already booked us a nice little spot.’

*

‘It’s a dosshouse.’

The Yeoman’s Hostelry called itself a hotel but, by the look of its frontage, it was little more than a backstreet hovel, with walls as flimsy as any beach shack on the seafront, and gates across its windows.

‘One of our regulars told me about it, down at the Daughters of Salvation. He used to live up here, before he made his way south. Looking for gold, like the rest of them. But the only gold he found was in his ale.’

‘And you got us rooms.’

The door had fallen open under Artie’s touch, revealing a reception hall as narrow as the galley kitchen in some cramped little terrace, and behind it not a soul to be seen.

Artie marched over and, by the pallid light spilling in through the snow-caked windows, rang a bell.

‘Correction!’ Artie announced. ‘I got us a room.’

Raymond just glared at him.

‘One room, Ray. Well, I’m not made of money. Times are hard, don’t you know? And, besides, we Cohen boys don’t need two rooms, do we? Now, Raymond de Guise – he’d need a whole bloody suite. But Ray Cohen that was, all he needs is a rag for a blanket and a place to lay his head. Am I right, or am I wrong?’

Raymond thought about it.

He thought about it again.

‘You’re right,’ he said, as a sallow-faced man appeared from a back door and started running a long black fingernail through the guest register. ‘Because right now, Artie, I’d sleep wherever I laid my head. I’d sleep out there, in the snow, if I just .?.?.’

The sallow-faced man, having taken Artie’s name, was holding a key in his grubby hand. Artie snatched it.

‘Then let’s get you sorted. This trip of ours, it’s only just beginning.’

A hotel like the Yeoman’s did not have a restaurant, nor a bistro, nor even a little canteen – but the man at the desk, who eventually introduced himself as Fox, did have a clapped-out toaster in the office out the back, and agreed to make them a breakfast of toast and honey for only a modest fee. Raymond didn’t care; he was just glad of the ballast to put right his belly. Once he’d eaten, he fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

It was, even Artie reflected, just as well – for the room was even dourer than he’d imagined. So small that its two single beds might as well have been an intimate double, it had a smell of damp that brought back Artie’s own vagrant days. Around the windows, black mould climbed the walls – and, at the skirting, the scat of the mice Artie could hear in the walls lay in thick clumps and trails.

Artie slept too. It was mid-afternoon by the time they awoke, to sore heads and sorer moods, and went out, again, into the snow. By now, Blackpool was a little more alive. Lights glowed in its shopfronts and houses, steam fogged the windows of the cafés they passed, and here and there motorcars ground their way across roads turned to tablets of ice. The roller coasters that soared over the promenade at the Pleasure Beach were like interlocking spirals of ice, magnificent structures bewitched by an ice queen straight out of Hans Christian Andersen. The new Fun House and Grand National rides had only been closed since the summer, but to look at them now was to think they’d been sleeping for a hundred enchanted years.

Stopping into the first café they found, Artie ordered up a double serving of steak and eggs, but the thought of it turned Raymond’s stomach – so he sustained himself with more hot buttered toast. Piece by piece, he began to know the shape of himself again.

‘You want to get some ballast in your belly. You can’t dance on toast.’

‘I’m not sure I feel like dancing, Artie.’

‘Nonsense! Come to the Empress Ballroom and not give her a little tango? You’re off your rocker!’

As Raymond nibbled meekly at the toast, Artie snatched a newspaper from a neighbouring table and began to leaf through it.

‘Look here,’ he said, and turned the newspaper around.

It was a copy of the Manchester Guardian, and across its front page the headlines screamed out:

GERMANY’S DAY OF WRECKING AND LOOTING

GANGS UNHAMPERED BY POLICE

SYNAGOGUES BURNT DOWN IN MAJOR CITIES

Raymond’s head was pounding, but something in this steadied his eyes. He began to read. Soon, the words were flying past: a young German diplomat, assassinated on the streets of Paris; violent reprisals echoing across the whole of the Third Reich.

‘And here.’ Artie had taken the innards of the newspaper out and was himself perusing another article. “Homes wanted, for child refugees”. Poor little mites,’ he muttered. ‘The bastards burn down their houses, smash up their shops, beat up their mas and pas, and then rout them out of the country. They’ll roll up here, without a word of English – and be lucky not to find the same sods right here, trying to drive them out.’

Raymond felt a flash of guilt. Artie had stood on the barricades at Cable Street two years ago, when the British Union of Fascists had marched through. He’d been brutalised for it, too – left in a gutter, his arm broken in two places, teeth chipped .?.?. and pride intact.

Raymond watched as he folded up the newspaper, shoved it into his back pocket, and slurped up the rest of his tea that had sloshed into its saucer.

‘I don’t know about you, Ray, but that’s sorted me out. I feel right as rain. I could visit an alehouse again now.’

Raymond – who still felt in the foothills of his own hangover – nodded weakly.

*

There were alehouses aplenty in the backstreets of Blackpool. The first they gravitated towards was filled with old men and their dominoes – Artie won a handful of copper coins, while Raymond lost so badly he had to stand everyone a drink – and, in the second and the third, were such roustabouts that, although Artie felt quite at home, Raymond wondered if he’d make it back to the Buckingham and married life at all. It wasn’t until the fourth taproom, where only a few scattered souls were drinking their way merrily through the winter, that Raymond started to come out of his hung-over fugue.

‘I told you! It’s like our old man used to say – the only good cure is a hair of the dog that bit you.’

‘This dog’s particularly .?.?. yeasty,’ said Raymond, as he put his new tankard to his lips.

Artie shook his head. ‘I’d ask ’em for a magnum of Veuve Clicquot, but somehow I think we might get laughed out of the place.’

‘By the way, I think I’ve found us a place to live,’ Raymond told his brother. ‘An old dancing friend put me on to it. A little corner of Maida Vale, overlooking the canal.’

‘Oh, fancy! You told Nance, have you?’

‘Not yet. I thought it might be a surprise. I’d take her there and cut a ribbon and carry her over the threshold .?.?.’

Artie rolled his eyes. ‘What have I told you about all these grand romantic gestures you think you have to make? Ray Cohen, you sanctimonious old sod! She’s marrying you for you, not for all your airs and graces. I mean, there’s you, in your fancy ballroom, courting duchesses and princesses, and you don’t know a bloody thing about love.’

‘This, coming from the man who hasn’t been in love in his life!’

Artie grabbed Raymond’s pint, deliberately put it to his lips and downed the whole lot.

‘What was that for?’

‘Because you’re being a lordly lackwit again, and I can’t stand it. Look, we didn’t come here to talk about love. We came because it’s us – me and you, Ray, the Cohen boys. One last blowout before you’re off to holy matrimony. Let’s have a bit of fun!’

Raymond smiled. There was a sozzled look in Artie’s eyes, and – to be perfectly honest – he was grateful not to have had to finish that last ale.

‘Come on, you old rascal.’

Artie took him fiercely by the arm, wrenched him upwards and out of the taproom, kept hauling him through the streets, until Raymond had to run to keep up.

‘There!’ cried Artie. ‘It’s time. I hear music, don’t you? I hear song. So let’s get ourselves in there, Ray, and have at it. We’re going to make it a night to remember. And .?.?. you and me, we’re going to dance.’

Raymond looked up. Above them both, picked out in silver lettering that reflected the starlight captured in the snow, were the words WINTER GARDENS.

*

In the Empress Ballroom, everything had changed, but the feeling was exactly the same.

If it was the warmth of the place that hit Artie, drawing him forward like a moth to a flame, it was the scent that brought Raymond back to his senses. The heat of the bodies out on the ballroom floor was incandescent, and in the air the smells of rosewood and varnish took Raymond back in time. Together, the brothers stood in the great arch of the entrance, listening to the orchestra working up a tango, and just gazed at the dancers turning the ballroom floor into a riot of passion and motion.

Raymond gazed up. The ballroom was garlanded by tiers of balconies, in which groups of old friends gathered to watch the spectacle below. He remembered being up there himself, watching Georges de la Motte compete on the floor below. Further up, the ballroom’s twelve chandeliers lit up the vaulted ceiling in radiant array. They’re like a constellation of stars, thought Raymond. They spilled their enchanted light, turning the mundane to the magnificent, the good to the great.

While Raymond took in the splendour, feeling the music pulsing in him, Artie’s eyes were scouring the ballroom for an altogether different reason.

‘There isn’t a bar,’ he finally announced.

‘There’s a lounge bar,’ said Raymond. ‘But Artie, you said we were going to dance!’

Artie beamed. ‘I did indeed .?.?.’

Until that night, Raymond had not understood the charm of a man like his brother. Ruddy-faced from the snow, wet and bedraggled as he was, it took Artie mere minutes before he’d inveigled his way into conversation with a group of ladies who’d come to the ballroom for their cousin’s birthday. Bringing them back to where Raymond was standing, still admiring the spectacle of the chandeliers above, he introduced the two eldest as, ‘Hilary and Rita, Ray. Hilary’s daughter’s thirty years old today. Quite an occasion. Rita here’s her daughter too.’

‘Sister!’ Rita, tall and with braided black hair, cried out, with a smile she found hard to suppress.

‘Sister?’ Artie gasped. ‘But you must be barely twenty years old.’ He leaned in close to Raymond and whispered, ‘You’ve got the looks, Ray, but I’ve always had the charm.’ Then he lifted himself again, as if standing to attention. ‘Be gentle with Raymond, Hilary. He doesn’t like to dance. Grew up with two left feet, you see. Can’t hold a candle to his brother. But, well, he’s getting married next month – so he deserves a good night.’

‘Congratulations, young man,’ Hilary said, waddling over to Raymond’s side and taking his hand. ‘But you’ll have to learn a dance or two, if only to impress this lucky girl on her wedding day.’

‘Oh,’ said Raymond, ‘I think I can manage.’

Artie was already leading black-haired Rita onto the dance floor, winking at Raymond over his shoulder.

‘Shall we?’ Raymond began.

‘I should think my old man, Gus over there, will have a fit to see me dancing with a handsome young man like you. It’s a good job you can’t dance, son. He’s likely to explode if he thinks someone’s a better dancer than him!’

As they wended their way onto the dance floor, Raymond caught sight of Artie already driving his tango across the ballroom, and smiled inwardly. If there was one thing he’d learned in the Grand, it was that you had to give the guests what they were expecting. Down there it was enchantment. It was being whisked away. It was the impression that they, too, were stars of the ballroom. Well, up here, he supposed it was going to be different. Give her what she’s expecting, he told himself.

How was it Billy Brogan danced again? The stumbles and the falls, the missteps and sideways trot? Yes, Raymond thought, I could just about manage that .?.?.

They danced with Hilary and Rita. They danced with another pair of sisters, out for a good night. Artie danced with an overly amorous older lady, who was happy to be swept into his arms but could hardly understand why he didn’t want a drink afterwards, and Raymond danced with two old dears who came to the Empress for the atmosphere and were nervous to take to the floor at all.

It was strange how time was dilated in a place like the Empress Ballroom. Memories popped into the air all around him as he turned and tangoed and waltzed, and soon Raymond de Guise had forgotten all about the roiling in his stomach that had been plaguing him all day. Soon, as the midnight hour approached, he and Artie were picking their way to the lounge bar, where they took two flagons of ale to a table in the corner.

‘Well, Ray, what do you make of that? I told you you’d have a night to remember. One last time, before your happy ever after!’

They had been sitting there for some time, the ballroom emptying and all its dancers heading out through the bar, when one of the stewards approached them from behind.

‘Come on, gentlemen,’ the old man said. ‘It’s midnight now.’

Artie whirled around. ‘Don’t you know who this is?’ he slurred, with an arm around his brother.

‘I’m afraid I do not.’

‘Only the greatest, the most celebrated, the champion .?.?.’

As Artie’s words turned into a stream of unintelligible noises, the elder man shook his head sadly.

‘You’ve had your fun, lads. Now, on your way. We’ve got to get this place shuttered up. You’ll be tucked up in a warm bed, and I’ll still be sweeping these floors.’

Muttering oaths, Artie stood and, smashing his arms back into the sleeves of his overcoat, tramped away. Muttering apologies, Raymond followed.

‘Anywhere we can get a drink in town?’ Artie called back.

The elder steward nodded. ‘Plenty, I should think. But you boys look like you’re old enough to know better.’

Now that the night was spent, the Cohen brothers tramped together, back into the snow. The other revellers fanned out around them as they pulled their collars high. Winters were cold in London, but none as bitter as this northern chill.

‘Things are going to change, aren’t they, Artie?’ Raymond slurred.

‘Aye, well, they will, if you go and get married. That’s in the nature of it.’

‘I don’t just mean that. I mean the Buckingham. I mean .?.?. Hélène. Archie’s found her an opportunity, a new life in Chicago. She’ll take it. She’ll have to. And then .?.?. it’s a new generation in the ballroom. I’ll be the oldest one by years.’

‘You can feel your dotage coming, can you, Ray?’

‘And John Hastings and war, and that poor boy from the Winter Hollers. It’s all moving too quickly. I can feel the world groaning with the weight of it. And this thing with Vivienne. That girl! Well, at least she hasn’t had to hide it, not like Hélène. When I think of what she had to do, of why she had to do it .?.?.’

Artie grunted. ‘You’re drunk, Ray.’

By now they were back on the seafront promenade. Raymond looked up.

‘Life’s like one of those,’ he said, gesturing at the roller coasters that arced overhead. ‘It just goes round and round and round, and if you don’t cling on, you get thrown off. Hélène clung on as long as she could. And me and you, Artie .?.?.’

‘We’re still riding it, Ray!’ he roared. ‘But you – one more drink, and you’d go straight over the edge.’

‘It’s like Vivienne’s life. Such a whirlwind. Well, it always was. Back before you knew her – the terror of the Buckingham halls! And now, even though she’s straightened her ways, even for all the good she’s doing, she’s still a tornado ripping through life. Well, good for her, I say. Why the devil not? You’ve got to take your chances. And Vivienne, at least she lives life.’ He laughed. ‘She’s landed on her feet again, of course. Living with the Peels, Nancy says. Got herself a new family in double-quick time. They’ll see her right. Warren Peel’s had his dark times, but Nancy says he’s a reformed man. At least they won’t go wanting. Vivienne can cast off the shackles of the Edgertons and turn into a Peel.’

It was some moments later that Raymond realised he was marching alone. He turned over his shoulder, only to see Artie standing some distance behind, his hands firmly planted on his hips, a look like a blizzard plastered across his face. The rippling veil of snow separated them, but Raymond could feel his fury from here.

‘Artie?’

‘You think you know it all, don’t you, Ray? You got life all figured out.’

‘Artie, what did I say?’

Artie burst forward. For a fleeting instant, Raymond thought he was about to throw a punch – he’d been on the receiving end of one of Artie’s right hooks more than once in his life – but instead he just marched past, knocking Raymond off kilter as he came.

‘Artie, wait up!’

Raymond reached out for his shoulder, spun him around.

‘Just because you’re lord of the manor, it doesn’t mean you know what’s going on in the world,’ said Artie. ‘Viv might have gone to stay with Warren Peel, you stuck-up toff, but she isn’t in love with him. She’s gone there because she needs a roof over her head. No, Ray, you got it all wrong. There’s no way our Viv’s going to marry little Warren Peel. I’d hazard Warren would love it, but he’s not for her.’

‘Why ever not?’ gasped Raymond. ‘Artie, you’re making no sense. They’d be good for each other, wouldn’t they? And if she’s having his child—’

‘She’s not having his child, you blind old sod!’

Raymond was still. He thought he saw a look like jubilation flashing across Artie’s face.

‘She’s having mine!’