Last Dance with Valentino. Daisy Waugh

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      I shall never forget how the two of us stood on deck, quite silent, as that vast ship pulled slowly out to sea. Side by side, we stood, surrounded by noise: the ground-shattering bellow of the ship’s horn, the whistling and weeping and the weeping and cheering of passengers on either side of us, and from the decks above and below us; and together we looked back at the Liverpool dock, where not a soul in the great waving crowd was weeping or whistling for us . . . It seemed unimaginable to me then that we would not return to England again.

      In any case, we watched until we could no longer make out the faces on shore. I was tearful, feverish – half wild with every crazy emotion – grieving for my brother and my unremembered mother, and for England, and for myself a little.

      I longed to speak, but couldn’t quite summon the confidence. So it was Papa in the end, with one of his heavy, melancholic sighs, who finally broke our long silence.

      Ah, well, he said.

      And he turned away. From me. From the shore. From everything he and I had ever known. My father presented himself as a man of the world, and he was, I suppose, in a way. But he had never left England before, so perhaps he was afraid. Or perhaps he already knew, as I didn’t yet, that the wonderful, whimsical era of Marcus Doyle and his Big Ideas was edging ever closer to its tired and unfulfilled finale.

      Or perhaps he might have been searching for somebody in the crowd, hoping until the last minute that some beautiful, familiar woman might appear from the midst of it and beg him to turn back again. Poor Papa. Since ever I can remember there was always a woman, always absurdly beautiful, always breaking his selfish, silly, fragile heart.

      I said, impertinently, because usually it lifted him a little when I was pert, and in any case I needed to talk – to say anything, just to make a noise, ‘You oughtn’t to worry, Papa. I understand there are ladies galore in the city of New York. Some of them quite intelligent. And not all of them hideous.’

      He smiled rather weakly. ‘Thank you, Lola. You’re very kind.’

      Papa used to call me Lola. I never knew why. He didn’t like the name Jennifer, I suppose. It’s why I chose it, of course. When the choice was mine.

      ‘But, Papa, you may find them alarming at first,’ I continued facetiously. ‘Mostly they are entirely fixated with the vote. So I read. Much more so than the average Englishwoman. You may have to become a “suffragist” if you’re to make any progress with the American girls.’

      He laughed at that. Which thrilled me. He ruffled my careful, seventeen-year-old hair, which, I remember, thrilled me rather less. ‘Come with me, my silly friend,’ he said to me. ‘Come and entertain me, will you, Lola? While I get myself a little stinko.’

      It was how we spent the voyage. It was how Papa and I spent the greater part of all our time together actually, once my brother had died – or since probably long before: since Mother died and Marcus was away at school and it was always just the two of us, on our own, with him a little stinko, and me trying my darnedest to keep his melancholy at bay.