Daisy Waugh - Last Dance with Valentino

‘ . . . and finally there is Mr Guglielmi ,’ Mr Hademak said regretfully. ‘But he is not quite a guest . . . Mr de Saulles only likes him to come so the other guests have an opportunity to watch Miss Sawyer dance. He comes once a week to teach Mrs de Saulles the tango – I believe Mr de Saulles pays his travel expenses . . . ’

‘He’s a professional dancer?’ I asked.

‘A dance instructor. And recently a new professional partner for Miss Sawyer. Not as good a partner as her last, in my small opinion. He was just a gardener not so long ago. And he iss a wop. So although he eats in the dining room,’ he said again, ‘he iss not quite a guest . . . ’

They arrived – the guests and the not-quite guest – in a noisy motorcade, four vehicles in all, with Mr de Saulles, and the woman, Joan Sawyer, whom my father had told me was our host’s mistress, in the front car. After them came a second car, and a third, both crammed with dinner guests, joyously attired. (After wartime London, it was amazing to see how colourful and prosperous they looked!) And in the final car – which stopped directly in front of us – sat the temporary nurse, who had earlier been dispatched to the city with the little boy, and the not-quite-guest, Mr Rodolfo Guglielmi.

That was the first time I glimpsed him, gazing moodily out of the automobile window, smoking a cigarette, with the boy, Jack, fast asleep against his shoulder . . . And even then, when I was so impatient to be reunited with my father, when there was so much new to look at, the sight of him made me stop. He looked quite detached amid all the activity – all the noisy people in their joyous hats, clambering out of their cars, shouting and laughing. He sat very still. More handsome than any man I had ever seen. His thoughts seemed to be miles away.

Mr Hademak and I stood side by side at the front door. I think he was rather put out to have me there – as uncertain as I was of my not-quite-guest-like status. Actually, it was difficult for both of us to know where I was meant to fit in for there was my father, climbing out of the same car as the duke. (‘There! I told you!’ whispered Hademak. ‘ That one – the great big chubby one – that is His Grace, the English duke!’) There he was, my father, clapping His English Grace on the great big chubby shoulder, laughing and joking with an elegant woman in vibrant yellow dress. And there was I.

‘Ah!’ cried my father, looking up at me, with love and warmth and blissful forgetfulness, I truly believe, as to where the two of us had only hours before left off. ‘There she is!’ He left the yellow woman and strode towards me. ‘My very own little Jane Eyre!’ He laughed, enveloped me in his arms, lifted me off my feet and kissed me. The familiar smell of alcohol, tobacco and his cologne . . . I can smell it now – I can feel the wash of relief I felt then, as his great arms wrapped me in it.

‘How is it, Lola, my sweet girl? Have you had a delightful day?’

The woman in the yellow dress shouted something at him. I didn’t hear what, but it made him laugh, and before I had time to say anything much he had put me down and wandered back to talk to her again. It didn’t matter at all, really. I was accustomed to his child-like attention span – and I was just so happy to see him. In any case he returned to me moments later, this time with our benefactor, Mr de Saulles, in tow. ‘Jack! I want you to meet my beautiful, clever, delightful, enchanting, charming, beautiful – did I already say that? – lovely , courageous, extraordinary daughter, Jennifer. Jennifer Doyle. Jennifer, this is Mr de Saulles, our immeasurably kind benefactor.’

De Saulles was tall and powerfully built, a good fifteen years older than his young wife, with hair slicked back from an even-featured, handsome face, a strong American jaw and startling bright blue eyes. He stared at me.

I said something – thanked him, I suppose, for all he’d done for us. He took a long moment to respond, but continued to gaze at me with the same strangely absent intensity. He said – and, like his wife’s, his voice was so clipped he might have been English himself, ‘Did they feed you well?’

I didn’t know if he meant on the ship, or in the house, or what he meant – or really, given the heavy cloud of alcohol that surrounded him, and the blank look behind his eyes, whether he meant anything by the question at all. I said, ‘Very well, thank you.’

Still, he gazed at me. I felt myself blushing. I also noticed Miss Sawyer beside him, fidgeting a little. She didn’t look so great – cheap, with the face paint. It was before we all wore it. Nevertheless I longed to be introduced to her – was on the point of introducing myself, even. But suddenly Mr de Saulles seemed to lose interest.

‘Good,’ he said abruptly. He put a careless arm around Miss Sawyer, pulled her towards him and looked about vaguely. ‘Has anyone seen my darling wife?’

After that Mr Hademak told me I should keep out of the way, so I wandered upstairs to my room at the back of the house – small and simple, but better than the room I had left in Chelsea – and while the music and laughter from downstairs grew steadily louder, I lay on my bed and tried to read.

I couldn’t concentrate. It was such an airless night – and my first in this new and exciting place. It seemed preposterous to be spending it alone in that small, hot room. So around ten o’clock I put the book aside. Downstairs I could hear the booming, bawdy voices of the men (and my father’s as loud as any of them). They were calling for Miss Sawyer and Mr Guglielmi to dance.

Only imagine it! In your own sitting room! I had read about the exhibition dances that were such a mad craze in America. In my bedroom at home in Chelsea I had attempted (from a magazine article) to teach myself the steps of the Castle Walk.

So, still in my travelling clothes, I crept out of the room, down the back stairs and into the front hall.

There were two doors opening into the long drawing room, one from the hall where I was standing, the other from the dining room. It would have been impossible for me to stand at either without being seen and no doubt shooed away, but I figured, on such a hot night, that the french windows – there were four of them connecting the drawing room to the trellised veranda beyond – would certainly have been thrown open. I decided the best view would be from the bushes a few yards in front of the house. So, back through the servants’ hall I crept, through the side door, through the flowerbeds all the way round the side of the house to the bushes by the driveway out front.

It was wonderful to be outside. I felt the cool evening darkness settle on my skin. The sound of music filled the air, and the great sky glittered with stars – the way it never did at home. Suddenly, as I scrambled through the last of the flowerbeds, struggling not to catch my clothes on invisible thorns, a sense of exultation at my new surroundings, at my new freedom – at being so far from England and the war – overtook me; a great explosion of joy, and it made me bolder than I might otherwise have been. I reached the bushes, which would have hidden me safely, and decided I wasn’t close enough. I could get a better view if I climbed right up onto the veranda. So that was what I did. With my heart in my mouth, I tiptoed up the few steps, squeezed into the shadows by the nearest of the open french windows and peered in.

The hotchpotch of rugs had been rolled back, making the room appear even larger and less cared-for than before. Chairs and couches had been arranged in a row along the opposite length of the room, so that the guests were facing out, directly towards me. I was confronted by an array of expensive clothes and shiny, red faces – some of their owners more inebriated than others, of course, though all, I would hazard a guess, a little distance from their sharpest.