The Girl From The Savoy. Hazel Gaynor

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СКАЧАТЬ I admire from high up in the theatre gallery, stamping my feet and shouting my appreciation and wishing I was on the stage with them, dressed in silver chiffon. They call us gallery girls: domestics and shopgirls who buy the cheap tickets and faithfully follow our favourite stars with something like a hysteria. We long for the glamorous life of the chorus girls and principal actresses; for a life that offers more than petticoats to mend and bootlaces to iron and steps to scrub. But I don’t just want to escape a life of drudgery. I want to soar. So I care for this restless fluttering in my heart as if it were a bird with a broken wing, in the hope that it will one day heal and fly.

      I jump at the sound of a sharp rap on the window beside me. I turn around to see a hard-featured gentleman scowling at me from inside the shop, mean-looking eyes glowering behind black-rimmed spectacles. He says something I can’t hear and flaps his hands, shooing me away as if I were a dog salivating outside the butcher’s shop. I stick my tongue out at him and leave the doorway, hurrying along, hopping over puddles, my toes drowning like unwanted kittens inside my sodden stockings.

      I pass bicycle shops and tobacconists, wine merchants, drapers and milliners, the rain falling in great curtains around me as I catch my reflection in the shop windows. Straggly curls hang limply beneath my cloche, all my efforts with curling irons and spirit lamps ruined by the rain. My new cotton stockings are splashed with dirt and sag at my ankles like folds of pastry, the rubber bands I’ve used as makeshift garter rolls clearly not up to the job. My borrowed coat is two sizes too big. My third-hand shoes squeak an apology for their shabby existence with every step. Piggy Griffin was right. I am an unpunctual untidy girl. A girl who will never get on in life.

      I dodge newspaper vendors and sidestep a huddle of gentlemen in bowler hats as tramcars and motorcars rattle along the road beside me, clanging their bells and tooting their horns. Cries of the street sellers and the pounding hooves of a dray horse add to the jumble of noise. My stomach tumbles like a butter churn, excited and terrified by the prospect of my new position as a maid at The Savoy hotel.

      The Savoy. I like the sound of it.

      With my head bent down against the slanting rain, I take the final turn down Carting Lane, where I collide spectacularly with a gentleman hurrying in the opposite direction. I stagger backwards, dropping my travel bag as he takes a dramatic tumble to the ground. It reminds me of a scene from a Buster Keaton picture. I clap my hand over my mouth to stop myself laughing.

      ‘I’m so sorry! Are you all right?’ I raise my voice above the noise of the rain and the hiss of motorcar tyres through puddles. ‘My fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’

      Dozens of sheets of paper are scattered around him, plastered to the sodden street like a child’s hopscotch markings. He attempts to stand up, slipping and sliding on the wet paving stones. I offer my hand and an arm for him to balance on. He grasps hold of both and I pull him upright. He is surprisingly tall when he’s vertical. And handsome. Rusted stubble peppers his chin. His lips are crowned with a slim sandy moustache, a shade lighter than his russet hair; the colour of fox fur. I really want to touch it, and clench my fists to make sure I don’t.

      ‘Are you hurt?’ I ask, bending down to pick up his pages.

      ‘I don’t think so.’ He shakes water from his coat like a dog just out of the sea and stoops to join me, scrabbling at the edges of the papers stuck to the pavement. ‘Feel like a damned fool, though. Are you hurt? That was quite a collision!’ He speaks like the man from the Pathé newsreels at the picture palace, all lah-de-dah and lovely.

      I check myself over. ‘I’ve a ladder in my stocking, but nothing that a needle and thread won’t fix. At least I managed to stay on my feet. Should’ve been looking where I was going.’

      ‘Me too. It was completely unavoidable.’ He looks at me, the hint of a smile dancing at the edge of his lips, his eyes deep puddles of grey that match the weather perfectly. ‘Or perhaps it was necessary.’

      We grin at each other like the greatest fools, as if we are stuck and neither of us is capable of pulling away, or doesn’t want to. London fades into the background as the rain becomes a gentle hush and the cries of the street vendors blend into a waltz in three-four time. For a perfect rain-soaked moment there is nothing to do, nowhere to be, nobody to worry about. Just the melody of a rainy London afternoon, and this stranger. I catch my reflection in his eyes. It is like looking into my future.

      A ribbon of rainwater slips off the edge of the peppermint-striped awning of the florist’s shop beside us, pooling in the crown of his hat. Grabbing the last of the papers, he ducks beneath the awning and the moment drifts away from us like a child’s lost balloon and all I can do is watch it disappear over the rooftops. I join him beneath the awning as he pats at his elbows with a white handkerchief and inspects a small tear in the knee of his trousers.

      ‘Damned new shoes,’ he mutters. ‘Treacherous in weather like this.’

      His shoes are smart two-tone navy-and-tan brogues. I glance at my black lace-ups, hand-me-downs from Clover, as battered and worn as old Mrs Spencer at the fish shop. I place one foot over the other, self-consciously. ‘That’s why I don’t bother with them,’ I say. ‘Old shoes are more reliable. Same with men.’

      My Lancashire accent sounds common beside him and I regret giving up the elocution lessons I’d started last year. Couldn’t stand the stuck-up woman who taught me. In the end I told her to get knotted with her how-nows and brown cows. Now I can’t help feeling I might have been a bit hasty.

      I watch as he fusses and fidgets to set himself right, adjusting his coat and replacing his trilby: nut-brown felt with a chocolate-ribbon trim. Ever so smart. Dark shadows beneath his eyes suggest a late night. He smells of whisky and cigarettes, brilliantine and rain. I can’t take my eyes off him.

      ‘If you don’t mind me saying, you look knackered.’

      He raises an eyebrow. ‘Are you always this complimentary to strangers?’ That smile again, tugging at the edge of his mouth as if pulled by an invisible string. ‘It was a late night, if you must know.’

      ‘Hope she was worth it.’

      He laughs. ‘Well, aren’t you the little comedienne! I needed some amusement today. Thank you.’

      As I hand him the sodden pages that I’ve rescued from the pavement, I notice the lines of musical notes. ‘Do you play?’

      ‘Yes.’ He takes a page from me. ‘I write it actually.’

      ‘A composer? Blimey! Blues or jazz?’

      ‘Blues, mainly.’

      ‘Oh.’

      ‘You sound disappointed.’

      ‘Prefer jazz.’

      ‘Doesn’t everybody?’

      I hand him another page. ‘Is it any good then, your music?’

      He looks a little embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid not. Not at the moment, anyway.’

      ‘That’s a shame. I love music. The good type, that is. Especially jazz.’

      He smiles again. ‘Then perhaps I should write some.’

      ‘Perhaps you should.’

      And here we are again, grinning at each other. There is something about this fox-haired СКАЧАТЬ