The Girl From The Savoy. Hazel Gaynor

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       3

       Loretta

      ‘Hope is a dangerous thing, darling. It is usually followed by disappointment and too much gin.’

      The soothing lilt of the piano drifts around the Winter Garden at Claridge’s. With a pleasing jazz medley the pianist captivates us all, the music mingling with polite chatter and the jangle of silver teaspoons against fine china cups. The sounds of afternoon tea. The sounds of luxury.

      I sit alone at my usual table for two, my brother being habitually late. One would think I would be used to his tardiness by now, but I find it irksome and unnecessary. Seated behind a huge date palm, I at least have a little privacy while I wait. A little, but not too much. The spaces between the foliage afford the guests an occasional glimpse, sending whispered speculations racing across the crisp white tablecloths. ‘Is it her?’ ‘I thought she was in Paris.’ ‘Yes, I’m certain it’s her.’

      I smile. Let them whisper and wonder. It is, after all, part of the performance.

      I sip my cup of Earl Grey as I watch the raindrops slip down the windowpanes. Mother always insists that tea tastes better when it rains, something to do with precipitation and dampness bringing out the flavour in the leaves. She is full of such tedious nonsense. It is one of the reasons I visit her as infrequently as possible. The fact that she can barely stand to be in the same room as me being another. In any event, despite the inclement weather, my tea tastes peculiar, and there is nothing more unsettling than peculiar-tasting tea, particularly at Claridge’s.

      I sniff the milk jug as discreetly as it is possible for one to sniff a milk jug in public. It has definitely turned. Mother would be appalled by the very fact that I take milk in Earl Grey at all. I look around for a waiter but think better of it. I don’t like to make a fuss. Not at Claridge’s. I’m awfully fond of Claridge’s, and besides I can’t summon the enthusiasm to make a proper fuss about anything recently. I decide to forgive this small oversight, assign the bad taste to too many gin cocktails last night, and reserve my annoyance for my wretched brother.

      I’m quite aware that Peregrine tolerates our ritual of afternoon tea simply to humour me. He has complained about it since we first started meeting here when he was a jaded young lawyer and I was a bored society debutante. He thinks it unfair that I only invite him to tea and not our older brother, Aubrey, but as I remind him frequently Aubrey is too busy and too married and too full of his own self-importance to contemplate tea with his little sister and brother. We are better off without him.

      ‘But must we take afternoon tea every Wednesday, Etta?’

      ‘Yes, Perry. We must.’

      ‘Might I ask why?’

      ‘Because afternoon tea is predictable and charming – qualities that should be preserved wherever possible. Because it is one of the few things in my life that I can do without a chaperone, and because if we stop meeting for afternoon tea, who knows what we will stop doing next. Eventually we’ll stop seeing each other altogether. We’ll become distant strangers, like Aubrey, communicating only through a few thoughtless lines scribbled on tasteless Christmas cards. One day we’ll realize that we miss afternoon tea on a Wednesday terribly, but it will be too late, because one – or both of us – will be dead.’

      Perry laughed and called me melodramatic, but he kept showing up nevertheless. In the end it wasn’t his lack of enthusiasm that brought an end to our little arrangement, it was war.

      Overnight, the carefree privileged life we knew came crashing to a halt as a new and terrifying existence settled upon us all like a suffocating fog. My brothers went to France to serve as officers on the Western Front. I enrolled as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse. Simple pleasures such as afternoon tea became a distant memory until the war ended and my brothers returned. We were all changed irrevocably by the long years between. Now I cling to Perry and afternoon tea at Claridge’s like a life raft, holding on with grim determination, even if his habitual tardiness irritates me immensely and gives me a daylong headache.

      ‘Would you care for another pot of Earl Grey while you wait, Miss May?’

      I glance up at the waiter. A handsome young chap. All taut-skinned and vibrant-eyed. The treasures of youth. ‘I suppose another can’t do any harm.’

      ‘No, miss. Not on such a dreadful day. And another slice of Battenberg, perhaps?’

      I nod. Even the waiters at Claridge’s know my preferences and tastes. It makes life extraordinarily dull at times. ‘And a fresh jug of milk,’ I add.

      ‘Very well, Miss May.’

      He moves with the precision of a principal ballet dancer, pirouetting behind the great ferns and Oriental screens that segment the room into private nooks and crannies. I almost call after him, tell him I’ve changed my mind and to bring Darjeeling and Madeira cake instead, but I don’t. Sometimes it is simpler to keep things as they are.

      The pianist plays ragtime as the rain thrums in time against the window. All is a colourless grey smudge outside, weather for reading a racy novel, or for playing backgammon by the fire if one isn’t easily enthralled by the notion of illicit love affairs. Bored and restless, I drape my arm casually over the back of the chair beside me, the creamy white of my skin visible where my sleeve СКАЧАТЬ