Last Dance with Valentino

It was a sweltering morning, and the pier was teeming; a monstrous, roaring jumble – or jungle, it seemed to me – of steam and smoke; motor-cars and carriages, porters, passengers and officials; and the clatter of horses’ hoofs and the spluttering of automobile engines, and above it all, the constant hammer and crash of construction, here and there and everywhere, and far off in the distance, from towering metal skeletons, there were little men, like insects in a spider’s web, riveting together more buildings to add to the madness of that crazy, beautiful skyline . . . So, we stood there, waiting, jostled this way and that: the failed English Portraitist, who drank too much, and the Failure’s daughter; I was mesmerised by the little men in their metal webs – I was mesmerised by it all. But, of course, I was lucky. I was young and – unlike my father – I had never really shone, so could never feel the shock of my insignificance quite as he must have felt it that morning. I think perhaps it frightened him, to feel so utterly, infinitesimally small.

After what felt a long while, with the two of us standing there – dumb and simply staring – I dared to ask my father if perhaps our mysterious benefactor had provided us with an address. Papa began to rifle half-heartedly through the pockets of his linen coat. But he seemed to be on edge. Even more so than before. He kept glancing at me, as if on the point of saying something, only to lose his nerve and fall silent again. Finally I asked him what was the matter. Had he lost the address? Was his friend not likely to come? Did his friend, perhaps, not even exist?

He looked pained.

‘Lola, old girl,’ he said, at last (and I knew at once we were in trouble. He only ever called me ‘old girl’ when he had something dreadful to say). ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. The, er . . . that is – the, er . . . As you know—’ Abruptly, he stopped patting his pockets, straightened up and looked at me.

He looked– what did he look? What did you look, Papa, just that instant before? Sorry? . . . Yes, I think so . . . Shamefaced? . . . Gosh, yes. Like an animal caught in a trap. ‘Dear girl,’ he said – boomed, rather, over all the noise. ‘I am not – that is to say, we – we, you and I, are not blessed with a pecuniary – pecuniary . . . How does one put it?’ He took a breath and tried again. ‘The time has come, old girl, now that you’re – we’re – now that we’ve arrived here, adults, and so on . . . The time has come for the two of us to address the perennial deficiency of funds at Ranch Doyle, such ranch that it is . . . Peripatetic ranch . . . and so on. It is, or has been, as you may or may not be aware, a constant struggle for your old papa to keep ahead of things . . . ’

Ahead of things! My poor father! I’m ashamed to say I laughed.

‘It has been a constant struggle to stay ahead of matters. And now that you yourself are a young lady – and a remarkable young lady, I may add – I was rather beginning to think . . . that is to say . . . What I have done . . . Oh, Lord . . . Perhaps I should have mentioned it earlier . . . ’

I began to feel a little sick. ‘Papa, for Heaven’s sake . . . ’ Over all the noise my voice was barely audible even to myself. ‘For Heaven’s sake, tell me – what should you have mentioned earlier?’

‘Only I didn’t feel it would be very pleasant to disrupt our very pleasant journey . . . What I have done, old girl, may take you a little by surprise. But I assure you in the long run it is with your own interests very much in my mind . . . at the forefront of my mind . . . that I have rather taken the matter of the, er, perennial pecuniary deficiency at our albeit rather peripatetic ranch into a new dimension . . . a new chapter, so to speak. That is to say . . . Lola, darling, when my kind friend Mr de Saulles offered to – ship us out here, he very sweetly made a suggestion regarding your own future, which I’m certain – I’m absolutely convinced—’

‘Misster Doyles? Misster Marquis Doyles?’

A strange man was peering down at my father. He was pale and extraordinarily tall, with white-blond hair slicked back from a huge, worried face, and a long chin that curved disconcertingly to one side. He was in his forties, possibly fifties; ageless, actually. And he was frowning – that eyebrowless frown with which I would grow so familiar.

There weren’t many who could peer down at Papa. Justin Hademak, the crazy Swede, must have been six and a half foot or more. He was a giant. ‘Misster Doyles?’ he repeated. ‘Iss it you?’

‘Aha!’ exclaimed my father, joyously, noticing him at last. ‘Saved by the bell. So to speak.’

‘You are Mr Doyles?’

‘Marcus Doyle. At your service. Jolly clever of you to spot us. You’re rather late. But no matter.’

‘Of courses.’ The giant bowed his head – it was absurdly formal – and flashed an unlikely smile. ‘I apologise. Unfortunately, at the moment of leaving, the mistress suddenly required the motor-car . . . with utmost urgency ...’

‘Don’t think about it for a second, old chap,’ my amiable father assured him. ‘When a lady requires a motor-car, she requires a motor-car!’

‘I am sent by Mr de Saulles,’ he continued, my father’s charm or humour – or whatever it was – quite lost on him, ‘but I am right to think you are indeed the portrait painter? It is important I locate him correctly. You are the renowned portrait painter from England, coming to America on the appointment of Mr John Longer de Saulles?’

‘I do solemnly declare that I am he,’ said my father. ‘Back me up, Lola, won’t you?’ he stage-whispered to me, above all the racket. ‘I’m not certain he believes me.’

‘And you are the daughter?’ said Mr Hademak.

I nodded.

‘You know, I’m almost certain de Saulles sent me a bit of paper, with all the particulars and so on, and I think he may even have mentioned you . . . a tall gentleman . . . ’ My father was patting his pockets again. ‘ . . . only it seems to have disappeared. Lola, do you suppose I may have given it to you?’

There was no opportunity to reply. Mr Hademak had taken a brief look at our travelling trunk and, in one easy swoop, bent from his freakish height, lifted it onto his shoulders and lurched headlong into the crowd. We had little choice but to end our conversation and follow him.

‘I am to put Mr Doyle into a motor vehicle and send him to Mr de Saulles in the city,’ the man shouted behind him. ‘Mr de Saulles is most impatient to see you again, Mr Doyle. You are to lunch together at Sherry’s, and afterward to join Mrs de Saulles for dinner at The Box . . . And the daughter . . . ’ he glanced back at me, not with any hostility, or with the slightest hint of interest ‘ . . . Mr de Saulles says you are to drive with me to The Box directly. The mistress wants . . . that is to say she doesn’t want . . . ’ He tailed off. ‘You are supposed,’ he tried again, ‘to begin your employment at once.’

‘To begin my . . . ’ I think I may even have laughed. ‘Papa?’ I turned to him. He looked away. ‘My employment . . . as what?’

‘Not quite employment . . . ’ my father muttered sheepishly. ‘Only the poor little chap’s got a Spanish accent, Lola. Y’see . . . That’s the thing. And he’s only four. Or nine. Or something frightful. He terribly needs someone to talk to . . . And then there’s dear Mrs de Saulles, hardly much older than you are, Lola, miles away from her native land and abysmally lonely most of the time. It’ll only be for a couple of months . . . ’

I didn’t say anything. I was too shocked – I had no idea what to say. I remember my silence seemed to annoy him. ‘Really, Jennifer, darling,’ he began to sound slightly peevish, ‘there’s no need to pull that long face. They’re excellent people. My friend Jack de Saulles is . . . top notch. And Mrs de Saulles comes from one of the most spectacular families in Chile. In fact I have a feeling her uncle might even be President. For example. And if he isn’t he certainly ought to be. In any case, darling, even if he isn’t, I don’t think you should complain when I arranged it all so nicely for you . . . Entirely because I was so utterly convinced you would enjoy yourself . . . ’

‘So . . . But we shall be living in different places?’

I could feel him itching to slide away from it all. How he longed for this conversation to be over! ‘Yes and no. That is to say, I shall be in the city mostly, at their apartment. But it’s all part of the same family. And I shall be travelling to see you during the week, of course. Or as often as I can . . . It’s really not far at all from New York. Only an hour or so by the train, Jack tells me . . . In any case it’s hardly up to me, is it?’

It seems ridiculous, I suppose, because I was a grown woman, with a father who was constantly broke, and of course I hadn’t a penny of my own – but it had never passed through my head, never, not even for a moment, that I should play any role during our great American adventure beyond the one I had always played: that is to say, to be hanging about with Papa in a daughterly fashion and occasionally slipping off to fall asleep.

But it was not to be. And why should it have been? No reason. One cannot remain a child for ever. Only I had been his constant companion for as long as I could remember. And the news that we were to separate came as a dreadful shock. I suppose, if I wish anything, I wish he’d had the courage to break the news to me a little earlier, so that I might at least have had time to prepare myself . . . It’s too bad. It doesn’t matter now, in any case. In fact, I am grateful it happened, and not simply because it allowed me to meet Rudy.

However, I was not grateful then. As I stood there on that crazy, bustling, deafening pier, the thought of being apart not just from my home but from the only person in the world I loved, or who loved me, filled me with nothing but a clammy dread. I looked across at Papa – still hoping, I think, that his face might break into one of those wonderful, wicked grins, that he might slap me on the back, as he did sometimes, always much too hard, and laugh, and tell me he was teasing.

But he didn’t look at me. Carefully didn’t look at me, I think. ‘Righty-ho!’ he said. ‘Jolly good. Well, take good care of my little Jennifer, won’t you, Mr . . . Mr . . . ’

‘Hademak. Justin Hademak. From Sweden . . . ’

‘Hademak. Of course you are. From Sweden. How delightful. Lovely. Well, jolly good.’

Mr Hademak put my father into a taxicab. Papa and I kissed each other briefly, without eye contact. I was afraid I would cry. He muttered something – good luck, old girl – something feeble, and not in the least up to the occasion. I didn’t reply. Couldn’t. And then, as he was driven away, he turned back to me.

I remember his expression, I see it now: it was as if he was apologising, and not just for this unfortunate incident but for everything. He looked awful: like someone else entirely – someone so old and so exhausted with the disappointment of himself it allowed me, briefly, to forget my own abandonment, and wonder, for the first time, what might become of him without me. He needed me more than either of us realised, I think. The sight of him, shrinking into the chaos, tore at my heart. It still does. He lifted his hat to me through the glass, and I think he whispered, Sorry. If he did, it was the first and last time . . . He never apologised to me again. Never. And he left me there, alone, with the giant from Sweden.

After Papa had disappeared into the great cloud of the city, Mr Hademak became (if it were possible) even more frantic than previously. Afterwards, when I knew him a little better, I wondered if he hadn’t done it on purpose, charged on ahead in that crazy way, yelling out instructions and so on, if not as a kindness to me then at least to avoid the embarrassment of having to witness my collapsing into tears. I might have done it too – collapsed, that is – if he’d allowed me a moment to pause. I’m not at all sure I would have held myself together.

‘Excellent,’ he declared, without looking at me – with the trunk still balanced high on his shoulder. ‘We must get over to the island right away.’ (Ellis Island, he meant, of course: which island we had passed as we came in; and where the steerage passengers disembarked to have their immigration papers checked. And their hair checked, for lice, I think, too.) ‘We must get over there quickly, though, Miss Doyle . . . So keep up!’ I had to run to stay apace. ‘We have to pick out a new maid. You must help me with that, young lady. They’re all rotten. Since the war we only get now the bad eggs. But we mustn’t fuss. Madame wants her motor-car outside the home . . . So we must pick out the first one we see who looks at all good. It doesn’t matter a spot anyway. They never do stay long . . . ’

The journey to Ellis Island took our little boat back towards the great statue that had so exhilarated me only an hour or so before; the freedom it celebrated seemed to have taken on a more menacing significance since then. Liberty was more than simply an idea suddenly, and how I longed to have a little less!

In any case, we bobbed along, Mr Hademak and I. Mr Hademak was too impatient to wait for the little boat to dock and he disembarked, with those ridiculous spider legs, when there was still a yard or two of water before the quay. And then, even before his foot had touched solid land, he announced as loudly as possible to the milling crowd that he was looking for a housemaid.

Immediately the crowd surged forward but it only infuriated him. ‘No, no, no!’ he snapped. ‘Get off! Get away! No gentlemen today. Are there any Irish about?’ Then, momentarily cornered by the swell, he turned to me. ‘Miss Doyle,’ he bellowed over their heads, ‘don’t just stand there. Find us a girl! And a sweet one, mind. Madame hates them to look drab. Over there! See?’ He pointed behind me. ‘See the little group of Paddies over there? See the young one, with that terribly mad hair?’

The one with the hair – the unmissable, magnificent, golden-russet curls – was a girl of my age, maybe a little older. She was sitting on a black tin suitcase, slightly apart from the others, her sharp face turned towards us. She examined the blond giant, then looked at me. I smiled at her but she didn’t smile back.

‘THAT one!’ he shouted at me, pointing irritably, batting the people away. ‘With the mad, mad hair. YOU!’ he yelled at her.

The girl looked back at him.

‘Ask her if she’s looking for some work. DO IT!’ he shouted. ‘Before someone else takes her! The good ones get stolen too quickly.’

So I turned to her, very embarrassed. ‘The gentleman . . . you probably heard him. He wants to know if you’re— ’

‘Is it board, too?’

‘Why, yess! Most certainly it iss!’ Mr Hademak cried, bearing down on us, his long white face sweating with the effort of having shaken himself loose at last. ‘It is board. And a nice job, too. Twelve dollars a week. Better than you’ll get anywhere else. With days off. Two days a month off! Do you want it, young lady? No or yes?’

She laughed. ‘Do I want it?’ She held out a hand to us, and I can picture her face now, the relief in her eyes, even while she was trying to hide it.

‘You have family?’

‘Back in Ireland. I’m here on my own.’

‘Good. Like the rest of us, then.’ He glanced at me, rather shyly, I think. Perhaps, even, with a whisper of a smile. ‘Welcome to America, young lady. You have your papers?’

She nodded. ‘I was only waiting for a ride to take me to the city.’

‘Well, come along, then. Follow me. Hurry now. We can tell ourselves about names and everything else like that in the motor-car. Only we must hurry.’

He drove us at breakneck speed. It was all so new to me and yet, at the time, I was too wrapped in my miserable thoughts to take much notice. I suppose, before long, we had left Manhattan – I remember nothing of it, only the three of us tearing over a long, straight, impeccably smooth road to Long Island; a road that Mr Hademak was pleased to tell us had been built by a rich man as a car-racing track – until, after however many deaths, the racing drivers had refused to use it any more. He had cackled as he told us this, shaken his head at their eccentricity, and proceeded to drive faster along that dangerous road than I had – or have – ever travelled. Mr Hademak spent most of the journey shouting at us over the din of the engine. It made the veins stick out on his neck.

‘Well well well . . . it is quite a household you ladies are coming to. Miss Doyle – I don’t know what you may know of it already?’

‘Almost nothing,’ I replied bitterly.

‘Quite a household,’ he continued blithely. ‘We have some quite colourful individuals who come our way. Oh, yes, we are quite the entertainers at The Box – as our little house is called. You will be most amused!’

Amused? It seemed unlikely. Amused? To have travelled so far, so full of fear and hope, only to be abandoned? To have arrived in that mythical new city at last, only to be whisked away from it? Actually, at that moment, I felt not so much amused, but as if a great wave of self-pity were enveloping me and, I’m ashamed to admit, tears were already stinging. I’m not sure I had ever felt so lonesome in my life.

Fortunately, neither Mr Hademak nor the Irish girl – Madeleine – seemed to notice.

‘First, we have the master of the house,’ he announced, as the car flew on, swerving aimlessly from one side of the road to the other. Mr Hademak, bolt upright at the wheel, smiled secretly to himself, and I wondered if, after so many trouble-free days at sea, I might finally be travel sick. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said, ‘and the master is truly quite some gentleman . . . And then we haf the little boy, of course – Jack Junior. Little Jack! Oh, but you will adore him! Quite the little man, he is! He is quite the little master! We all simply adore him. All the servants, and his papa and his mama too. He’s everybody’s favourite! Every single body in our happy little big house just so simply adores him—’

Suddenly Madeleine, the Irish girl, gave a loud and derisive snort. I stared at her. Last she’d spoken, she’d been telling us, with eyes lowered and trembling lip, how she’d come to America alone because her husband had been killed in the French trenches (later she told me she’d never been married: she’d been found in bed with the priest and hounded out of town). She seemed to have forgotten her grief quickly enough. She glanced at me and rolled her eyes, and it goes to show what sort of a hysterical mind I was in, because the next thing, with tears of self-pity still pricking my eyeballs, I was shaking with quiet giggles.

‘But you mustn’t think our life is only about the Little Man,’ Mr Hademak continued cheerfully. ‘Also we are quite the fashionable gathering. Though sometimes, when Madame is in the city, we are just the two of us: Father and Little Man. And then sometimes it is Mother and Little Man, when Mr de Saulles is in town. And then we have Madame and her amusing friends. Or Mr de Saulles and his amusing friends. Or Mr and Mrs de Saulles and their amusing friends. Yes, yes – it is all most amusing . . . We have counts and countesses of Europe. And Mr de Saulles sometimes brings along his Broadway – connections. And how lively they are! And even some of the stars from the pictures! No, no, not quite Miss Mary Pickford! Not quite yet! But we have an English duke. An English duke! And we have so many others. Dancers. Politicians . . . You might have read about them all quite often. In the yellow papers. Yess . . . ’ It was Mr Hademak’s turn to laugh helplessly. He rocked on his bony backside, this way, then that.

‘Sometimes,’ he continued finally, ‘I wonder if I know more about these fashionable individuals than they even quite know themselves . . . We are quite the fast set at The Box, you will discover. Oh, you will be most amused.’

‘And if you’ll excuse me for asking,’ interjected Madeleine, suddenly, ‘only I’m wondering – what’s the mistress like?’

–Ha. And if I had known the answer to that – would I have stopped the car?

Would I have thrown myself out onto that racing drivers’ rejected MotorParkway right there and then, hitched a lift with whatever vehicle came along, hauled my father from his delightful lunch at Sherry’s, and taken whatever employment anyone offered me? Perhaps.

She destroyed my father – what there was left of him to destroy. And she haunts me still – there’s barely a day goes by I don’t think of her, of the part I played or didn’t play, of what I saw and said, and didn’t see and should have said . . .

On the other hand, without her, I would never have befriended Rudy. Or ever have travelled to Hollywood. Nor Rudy either. Imagine that! Then who would the readers of Photoplay be drooling over at nights? Perhaps, in spite of everything, I should be grateful to her. Well, and maybe I am, but I hope she burns in any case – if not at Sing Sing, then in Hell when she finally gets there.

– – –

‘What’s the mistress like?’ asked Madeleine.

And I swear Mr Hademak blushed.

Dear God – three in the morning already, and still too damn hot to sleep! I have been writing all night so my arm is swollen. And my head is burning and my eyeballs ache . . . but I can’t stop. Not yet. Not until I reach the moment where Rudy and I are there in the garden, and we are standing in silence together, listening to the music, and I am wondering about Papa, and where he is, and worrying a little about his newest infatuation, but not as much as I ordinarily would because how can I when Mr Guglielmi – Rudy – is standing so very close beside me? And I don’t believe I have ever glimpsed a more handsome, more dazzling man in all my life.

And then he turns to me and he says, ‘It’s beautiful music, isn’t it?’ And his voice – his Italian accent was much stronger then but his voice was the same: that low, dark, beautiful voice. I can feel it through me. I didn’t recognise the music. I’m not sure that I had even fully noticed it was playing. And he smiled at me, and I thought how sad he must have looked before because the smile had such an effect, as if his face had been illuminated by a thousand million electric light bulbs, and he said, ‘Do you like to dance, Jenny?’

You made me love you . . . I didn’t want to do it . . . You made me want you . . . And all the time you knew it

Rodolfo Guglielmi was a professional dancer then: a dancer-for-hire. When the papers wrote about him – because of the divorce – they called him a lot of hateful names, and of course they still do. And of course he was no angel then. He is a long way from being an angel now, I suppose. But, Hell, which of us isn’t?

When he danced it was as if he moved through a different space from the rest of us: as if the air carried him; as if he had no weight at all. So I danced with him, still in my travelling clothes, in the moonlight, and with the music seeping through the warm night air. And I thought – I remember it so clearly – I thought, This is Life! Now I am truly alive . . .

What a gorgeous, magical place is this America!

– – –

Justin Hademak said it again, as we were turning into its long drive: ‘We are quite the fast set at The Box you will discover.’ It didn’t surprise me, knowing my father and the people he normally consorted with. Actually I would have been surprised if they had been anything else.