Last Dance with Valentino

By then, in any case, Papa never left his room – except, I suppose, to stock up on liquor, since he seemed never to run out. Often, when I came to see him, he wouldn’t talk to me. When he did, when he volunteered any comment at all, it was almost only in relation to Mrs de Saulles.

Was she well?

No.

Did she speak of him?

No.

Had she sent a message?

Of course not.

Whole hours would pass and he wouldn’t speak a word. I would tidy the room, cook for him, chatter about this and that – anything that came into my head: England, mostly; memories of happier times. I would tell him my feeble gossip – that Madeleine was seeing a car mechanic in Westbury; that Mr Hademak had written again to Mary Pickford – but my father rarely responded. I told him the typewriter lent to me by Mr de Saulles was broken.

‘What d’you want it for anyway?’ he asked suddenly. His voice made me jump.

‘For my writing,’ I reminded him. ‘I am still writing stories and – scenarios and things . . . ’

‘Ah, yes . . . Like your mother. Always scribbling . . . ’

I hadn’t known it. I had no memory. I asked him to tell me more – scribbling what? Did he possess anything, still, which she had written? But he wouldn’t be drawn. Wouldn’t speak.

I had lost the art of coaxing him from his melancholy.

Endlessly, clumsily, stubbornly, I would ask him about his ‘future plans’, though of course I knew he had none. He would pretend not to hear me.

Once, when I was feeling very brave, I asked if he had yet been in contact with Mr Guglielmi. ‘I’m sure he’d be quite a friend to you . . . ’ I said.

With a flicker of the old spirit, he replied, ‘I would be most awfully grateful, Lola, if you didn’t mention that repulsive little gigolo to me by name or implication. Ever again.’

‘Papa, do you still have an address or a telephone number for him?’ I persevered. ‘I could telephone him myself, if you prefer?’

He gave a mirthless, unkind little snort. ‘You shall do no such thing.’

Often he would ignore me altogether, and simply drink, and gaze out of that window onto the noisy, lively street below. I would sit with him – and try very hard to remember the years he had looked after me; all the warmth and humour and joy he had shared with me, in his own particular way. And I would look at him, so wrapped in his defeat, and try to remind myself of the times when he had been a different man, whom I could still easily love – but I did. I did still love him.

Our hours together seemed to crawl. Through the stillness, and our silence, and the window he insisted on keeping shut tight, the sounds of the city would seep in; the sounds of a whole world, still fighting at life, not yet despairing . . . I am sorry to say there were times, on those long afternoons, when I yearned to be out there, and away from him, and free of him. I wished for it so intensely it was almost as if I wished he were dead.

I don’t believe my presence helped him much. There were times, I’m sure of it, when he longed for me to leave him as much as I longed to be gone – mostly, I think, he wanted nothing any more but to be left in peace. I explain all this to myself and maybe one day – who knows? – I might even believe it.

Papa would wince when he saw me sometimes. There I would stand, bright and early each Sunday morning, fresh and young and bursting with life, and smiling, carrying groceries – as if I believed he might one day eat something. And I would watch, and try not to wince, as he slowly absorbed the disappointment – that it was only me standing at his door. Not Mrs de Saulles. Or my mother. Or any of the others. Just his daughter, whom he used to love. I would see the weariness return to his face, and the sorrow – because he did still love me. Enough to try his best not to hurt me. I would watch him struggling with the impulse to close the door in my face; and then the monumental effort it took for him to summon some spark of warmth, and to reassure me that he was so terribly delighted I had come . . .

I heard nothing from Rudy. The days passed and I longed for him – I’m afraid I thought more of him than of my father’s suffering. I thought of him all day and all night.

Mr Hademak saw me moping about one morning, squinting over his shoulder as he arranged Mrs de Saulles’s post on her breakfast tray. He said, with his great shoulders still turned to me, but the back of his neck glowing beetroot red, ‘You do it effry morning, Jennifer.’

‘Do what?’

‘And if you’re waiting for correspondences from any one person or gentleman in particular,’ he said, ‘you must understand that any . . . person . . . in particular . . . won’t be so rude to write it to you here. He can’t. It would be a very unhappy idea. To keep our little ship steady. And so I have said to him it might be better if he is writing in the care of a certain boarding-house. And that is I am sure what he is doing . . . ’

So, the next time I visited Papa, and the next and then the time after that, I asked him if there were any letters for me. But he always said no.

It must have been very close to the time America joined the war. I don’t remember on which side of the declaration it actually fell but there was war in the air, war on everybody’s lips.

More immediately, at least for our little household, the de Saulles divorce hearing had taken place the previous day. Little Jack was staying with his father, and so I had nothing to do. A message came down, very early, via Hademak, that Mrs de Saulles was not feeling well.

The hearing had not gone as she had hoped, Mr Hademak reported, though he refused to be drawn on the details. Mrs de Saulles wanted ‘isolation for her peace’, so she could reconcile herself to her new situation. She didn’t care what we did or where we went, but there were to be no servants in her eyesight until nightfall.

It was bitterly cold outside. Unseasonably cold. There was snow on the ground and what looked like the promise of more to come, but I had a free day. I contemplated spending it with Madeleine, at the movies – only she was busy with the car mechanic in Westbury, whose wife, Madeleine said . . .

Oh, Madeleine!

‘Oh, I know it!’ she cried.

You never mentioned a wife!

‘How could I?’ The only times I ever saw her weep, it was about the married car mechanic in Westbury. She adored him.

Mr Hademak offered to drive me to the station so I could spend the unexpected holiday with my father. Moved more by duty than enthusiasm, I accepted the offer. I had nothing better to do.

As I travelled into the city I searched the newspaper for details of the divorce hearing and was horrified to read that Rudy had played his part in it, after all. He had given his testimony, stood as a witness to Mr de Saulles’s adultery, and the reporter had gone to some lengths to mock him for it – mocked his dark appearance, his foreign accent, his profession, his decision to appear at all . . . It was painful to read.

I was mulling on all that, worrying for him, missing him, resenting him, dragging my feet through the busy crowd, that magnificent space at Penn Station, and feeling, for once, quite unmoved by it, when suddenly – I heard his voice! Was it possible? Was I dreaming? There were hundreds of people between us, rushing this way and that. And yet there he was, beneath the soaring arches, the giant columns, between all those hundreds and thousands of people – there he was. And in a few graceful, invisible steps, he was beside me, with his two arms wrapped around me.

‘Jennifer! . . . It is! It is you! I must be the luckiest man in New York! Where in heaven’s name have you been?’ He lifted me in the air, and he kissed me, one on each cheek, and it was so un-American; so careless – all I could do was to laugh. 1917, it still was; a lifetime ago. We had our hemlines still flapping just above our ankles! We were still so terribly correct! But Rudy’s warmth overrode all that. I could feel the people’s stares as they elbowed by. It couldn’t have mattered less.

‘Jennifer, wonderful Jennifer, where in God’s name have you been?’ he said again.

‘I should dearly love to tell you differently . . . ’ I laughed ‘ . . . only, Rudy, I think you know quite well where I’ve been!’

‘But I have left you so many messages – and nothing! Not a word! I wondered if I had done something to offend you . . . and so I thought and I thought – and I thought and I thought . . . and I could think of nothing!’

‘Nothing!’ I repeated. Like a fool. ‘Of course you’ve done nothing to offend me whatsoever . . . but you left messages where? At Roslyn? At The Box? Mr Hademak said you might have left them with my father.’

I had missed him and longed for him. Until that moment, with his arms still wrapped around me, I’d not the slightest comprehension how very much. I felt a rush of – relief, I suppose, flooding through me, and the most crazy, wild happiness . . . and then a lump in my throat, and my eyeballs stinging . . .

I longed for nothing more than to sink my head onto his shoulder and never ever to lift it again. He put me down, and gave me a moment to collect myself.

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