After the Cabaret (3 page)

She looked at Sally, still in a Chinese dressing-gown (where had that come from?) at the breakfast table at eight thirty in the morning. How pretty she could be, if she took care of herself – her carriage, her expression, her feet, hands, nails, skin, her hair. Why was she so badly regulated, so careless, physically and morally? She was a cross that Geneviève had to carry. It was on account of Sally that she, Geneviève, to her own family was still known as ‘poor Geneviève', ‘
la pauvre
'.

Geneviève came of a prosperous, conservative family, in which life moved calmly and to a strict routine. On a certain date each year they all moved for the holidays from the city to the Normandy farm. On a second date, they returned to the big apartment in Paris. In autumn, they made preserves. In Lent, they fasted. In Paris the carpets were taken up for the summer, in September they were replaced. The domestic patterns were as orderly, the family finances conducted as frugally, as those of the convents in which the women of the family had received their early training. They married in the small circles in which they lived – unions that were not quite arranged but almost.

Geneviève broke the pattern when handsome Captain Jackson-Bowles of the Lancashire Fusiliers was brought home on leave from the trenches during the Great War by a relative in the French Army. Geneviève fell in love with
Harry Jackson-Bowles and married him – an Englishman, a Protestant and a self-made man, a manufacturer. That was when she had become ‘poor Geneviève' to her family. But had it not been for Sally, with a successful marriage on her side, sooner or later she would have lost that name. Instead it was still ‘poor Geneviève' and ‘Sally – always something new with Sally', spoken in a way that, while it said little, said everything.

There had been Germany. Then the scandal when Sally went to Spain with a man – of the left! – prepared to fight on the wrong side! And now this baby, whose father she would not even name. At least, thought Geneviève, she could not undertake the painful duty of breaking this last sad piece of news to her sister Madeleine, so that she in turn could break it gently to Great-aunt Marie Claire in her convent. For there would be no news in or out of France for a long time. Geneviève did not permit herself to sigh. Instead she said, ‘I think, if you have both finished your breakfast, you would like to go for a walk now, to talk.' The English often talked better to each other while walking in the open air, she knew. And Harry must find out the identity of the baby's father.

She watched father and daughter leave the house together. Perhaps it would have been better if Sally had been a boy, she thought, as she often had before. Behaviour such as Sally's was acceptable in a boy, not in a girl. That there was an excellent reason for this rule was indisputable: upstairs, in a cradle, lay the evidence.

Sally and her father were in the orchard. As they passed the lawn, half dug up now for vegetables, Harry Bowles had
said, ‘In six months' time there'll be no food, none at all.' Now he said, ‘Sally, we're very upset. This baby – if only you'd tell us who her father is. Perhaps I could speak to him. Something must be arranged. My God, Sally,' he burst out, ‘imagine a birth certificate saying “father unknown”. It's too bad. It's a disgrace.'

To this Sally made no answer. Harry grew angry. ‘You've been a cross to carry for your poor mother from the word go,' he said hotly. ‘You're a silly girl. A very silly girl.' He turned away from his daughter and walked back to the house.

He'd always called her a silly girl, thought Sally. He was probably right. She kicked the gnarled old trunk of a Cox's Orange Pippin. Too early for that satisfying, wasteful thump of apples falling to the ground. She'd have to wait until September for that, she thought, and she wouldn't be here in September. In fact, she'd better get out as soon as she could pack her suitcase.

‘Well, my dear, you'd have done far better to stay where you were,' Cora Blow remarked comfortably, from her deep chintz-covered armchair. She and Sally were alone in her cosy sitting room on the first floor of the Hotel Bessemer, which Cora owned. Situated in Bessemer Street behind Wigmore Street, behind Oxford Street, on the fringes of the area known as Mayfair, the hotel was on the edge of respectability, much as Cora herself had been on the edge of fashionable society for some fifty years. Her little tables, relics of an Edwardian past, were crowded with ornaments and framed photographs of a young and beautiful Cora with the notables of two generations – Cora in a big hat and a bustle with the old Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, Cora in a small hat and Chanel suit with the later Prince of Wales, who was now the Duke of Windsor, and Mrs Simpson. Other photographs showed Cora with a bouquet, Cora at the races, Cora at Cowes with a Balkan prince, Cora in Monte Carlo.

How she had come by the big, faded hotel in Bessemer Street, the width of two houses, with a portico in front, no one really knew. Someone had been grateful to her for something, and had rewarded her accordingly – unless she'd won it gambling. Those who knew the details never told.

Now she ran the hotel as a private kingdom, assisted by the head hall porter, Bates, her
alter ego
. There were twenty bedrooms but Cora was quite capable of turning away would-be guests when most were empty – because they were middle class, because they were Americans, because they were musicians. Cora liked aristocrats and loved artists but hated the middle class and musicians. In her hotel Cora's whims were law.

Now Sally gazed ingenuously at Cora, who, for this morning interview, was wearing a vast dark red peignoir, with plenty of ruffles. Her grey hair was bundled roughly on top of her head and she was smoking a thin cigar.

In turn Cora appraised Sally, thinking, Pretty, untidy dresser, nice eyes, pale. Where does she come from? Something about a Mile Février de Roche and a bourgeois marriage with a certain Jackson-Bowles. Cora was a walking
Who's Who
and
Almanach de Gotha
, but she knew all the secrets behind their pages, too. In a hotelier this pays.

‘Well, my dear,' she said, rising to pour the first gin of the day and gesturing vaguely with the cigar at Sally – who, as befitted a would-be employee, shook her head, ‘well, dear, as I say, you'd do better to stay in the country, plenty of butter there, eggs, further away from the struggle, as you might put it, but in the circumstances, with all the staff
shortages, why not? You can have the little room in the attics, so recently vacated by Doris Strong, who decided to run off and join the Army. That's the snag, though. How long will you be here before they start putting women into war work?'

‘War work?' Sally wondered.

‘Yes. I've heard a whisper they may order all the women into factories or make them work on farms, planting potatoes and milking cows. I don't know how to keep this place going without staff. We'll manage, I suppose.'

‘I've got a baby,' Sally announced.

‘A
widow
,' Cora declared, with Edwardian firmness. ‘Well, as long as you don't bring it here to disturb my guests you will be quite suitable. The Government will probably exempt mothers from forced labour. So all's for the best. Go and see Mr Bates about the details.'

‘Thank you, Mrs Blow,' said Sally, standing up.

As she opened the door Cora said to her back, ‘Oh – no hanky-panky with the guests, that goes without saying.' I do
not
think, she added silently to the closed door. Still, she needed someone. The girl said she was a friend of Mr Fitzpatrick's – Cora knew what
that
must mean.

As she descended the sweeping marble staircase to the hall, Sally reflected that Cora had not told her what her duties would be, or, which was important, how much she would be paid.

Frederick Bates had stood on the cold marble floor of the Bessemer behind his mahogany desk for as long as anyone could remember. Those who had faced his neutral eyes on visits to London in short trousers during their
school holidays and were now dignified grown men still retained a healthy respect for Bates. They felt much the same about Cora, whom they saw as the most capricious, arbitrary school matron ever, rewarding and punishing as she saw fit.

From behind his desk, Bates said, ‘Wages? Hah. Chance would be a fine thing. Pays you when she feels like it, which isn't often. That's Cora Blow for you. Still, you've got a roof over your head. That's something. And where's your gas mask? You can be arrested for not carrying one.'

‘I'll go and get one,' Sally promised. ‘By the way, Mr Bates, do you know how to register a baby?'

‘As a what?' asked Bates.

Sally stared at him. ‘As a baby, of course,' she responded.

‘Ask a policeman,' he said promptly.

As she left he studied her pink-clad back and muttered, ‘French suit! Get a gas mask? Where does she think she'll go for it – Harrods? And registering a baby? She'd better not bring it here.'

Two officers in the uniform of the Free French came up to the desk. Bates said, in French, ‘Good morning, officers. How may I help you?'

Greg's mouth was dry. He gazed, astonished, at Bruno as the old man went on calmly, ‘You know the history, of course. The Germans overran Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and France in only six months. They'd already conquered their neighbours to the east. That summer Russia opportunistically attacked the Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. The Germans didn't stop them. They were allies. Britain had no allies – only the help of its Empire. The RAF was defending the coasts day and night. Hitler would invade Britain, he said, when the Royal Air Force had been destroyed. In short, it was a siege.

‘Until September, the desperate battles were all over the sea and coast; the cities had been fairly safe from bombing. The country was packed with troops from all over the British Empire, Australians, Canadians, West Indians. There were also men who had escaped from occupied Europe – Belgians, Dutch, French, Poles – and their leaders, monarchs, politicians and their entourages.
And we were waiting. The RAF seemed to be losing the battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe had five planes, at least, to each British one. It was a miracle they had hung on so long.

‘So one summer night in Pontifex Street, we were sitting out on the flat part of the roof with a bottle of gin Adrian Pym had got from somewhere, and we had hauled some cushions and the gramophone up through the trap-door. It was dark, of course. There were no street-lamps, no lights showing from the houses, the skies were filled with the vast white shapes of barrage balloons. It was rather quiet, too – conditions kept traffic off the roads. It was like living in the country, really, but more menacing.

‘We were a good-looking group, I have to say this,' Bruno told Greg. ‘Briggs was a tall, slender man, very handsome in an English way – a long nose and pale brown hair, with a lock that fell forward. The most beautiful thing about him was his eyebrows, over which that lock of hair so often fell – arched, fine, covering rather narrow, long blue eyes. Pym's appearance was rather extraordinary. He was dark-haired with very blue eyes, fringed with thick black lashes. His lips were full. His body was beautiful, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, and his legs were superb. He was also very attractive, sexually attractive, and people, men and women alike, just fell for him. He had no inhibitions and this came out of him, like a scent. He could have seduced a bishop. Indeed,' said Bruno, ‘according to him, he had.

‘Julia,' Bruno went on, with a grimace, ‘was an awful girl. “Terribly pretty,” they used to say of her, and I suppose
she was, blonde, with big blue eyes and a small mouth. Oh, those “terribly pretty” cold English blondes.' Bruno smiled an old, cynical smile at Greg. ‘You will be thinking that Lowenthal, the nasty old queen, can see only the attractions of men, eh? Perhaps – but I don't think so. So there we were, none of us yet thirty, like you, beautiful and afraid. I myself,' he said, with some vanity, ‘was tall, blond and pretty, Aryan to the fingertips, to one who did not know the truth. I was twenty-one. Hard to believe, isn't it? Bruno Lowenthal – tall, handsome, only twenty-one years old.

‘So there we sat, with the music playing, and I remember Briggs looking up, saying, “You can see the stars. It's such a good opportunity to learn astronomy.” He was sitting on a cushion, and his hair was very neat even after the scramble up the ladder and through the trap-door to the roof. His shirt, open at the neck, was clean, his trousers still had a crease.

‘“I'd rather you took up astrology, Briggs,” said Pym. “Then you could put on a fringed shawl and earrings and tell us all our fortunes.” The doorbell rang downstairs. We ignored it.

‘“Good idea,” said Julia Montrose. Well, we all knew what she wanted an astrologer to tell her. Sir Peveril was running a branch of the intelligence services at the time. She was his secretary, and his lover. She hoped he would abandon his wife and children, who were living in the country, and marry her. But at that time Sir Peveril was not thinking of making any changes in his private life. His work was making too many demands on him. Or so he said.

‘Julia was sitting, tidily, on her cushion, blonde hair in a roll at the back. Pym was lying down, a bit drunk, looking as ever like an Italian angel, with his perfect golden skin, smooth dark hair, large eyes with the long lashes – oh, everybody fell in love with Adrian Pym, though he never fell in love with anyone.

‘And he said, in a Romanian-gypsy accent, “I see you, my dear, wife of a handsome man in his fifties, with a brood of tall sons about you, ruling over wide, rolling acres in the West.” When I say he sounded like a Romanian gypsy, he did. He had an uncanny ear for accents, a gift for languages, a nasty tongue, also. Julia winced, for he was telling her what she most wanted – and that meant he knew.