Hazel Gaynor - The Girl From The Savoy

I pinch him again. ‘You’re a dreadful tease, Peregrine Clements. First-night notices are ghastly things. I’m nervous. What if the critics hate it? I really can’t bear to think about it.’

He crushes his cigarette beneath his shoe. ‘Come on. Let’s get disgracefully drunk. By the time the notices are in, you’ll be too blotto to care.’

But despite the cold and the lure of champagne cocktails, I’m reluctant to go inside. ‘Walk with me around the square?’

‘What? It’s freezing. You need a gin fizz, dear girl, not an evening constitutional.’

‘Please, Perry. Just once around. It was so dreadfully stuffy in the theatre tonight, and the club can be so suffocating at times.’

He sighs and offers his arm. ‘Very well. I’ve lost most of the sensation in one leg. I might as well have a matching pair.’

Looping my arm through his, I rest my head wearily on his shoulder as we stroll. I enjoy the sensation of his cashmere scarf against my cheek; the sensation of someone beside me. For a woman constantly surrounded by people, I so often feel desperately alone.

We walk in comfortable silence. For a few rare moments we are nothing more remarkable than a brother and sister enjoying an evening stroll. Much as he frustrates me, I love Perry dearly, although I can never bring myself to tell him so. Even when he came back from the front I couldn’t say what I’d planned, couldn’t say the words I’d rehearsed in my head and written in dozens of unsent letters. Old habits die hard. Our privileged upbringing might have left us with proper manners and a love of Shakespeare, but it also left the scars of unspoken fondnesses and absent affection. We are as crippled by our emotions as Perry is by the shrapnel wound to his knee.

‘How did the meeting go with Charlot today? Did he like your piece?’ I hardly dare ask. Perry’s meetings with theatrical producers have been less than successful recently.

He yawns. A habit of his when he isn’t telling the truth. ‘Not bad. He didn’t hate it. Didn’t love it either.’

I stop walking. ‘You didn’t go, did you?’

‘Damn it, Etta. Are you having me trailed? How do you know everything about me?’

‘Because you are about as cryptic as a brick, darling. Anyway, it doesn’t matter how I know. But I would like to know why you didn’t go.’

We continue walking as he explains. ‘The sheet music was ruined by the rain when I bumped into that girl yesterday. And it was a lot of miserable old rot anyway. Charlot wants uplifting pieces. The phrase he used last time I saw him was “whimsical”. He told me people want to be amused, that Londoners have an appetite for frivolity. I haven’t a whimsical bone in my body, Etta. Why put myself through the embarrassment of rejection again?’

For months it has been the same. Unfinished melodies. Missed appointments. All the promise and talent he had shown before the war left behind in the mud and the trenches.

‘You need to get out more, Perry. You need to meet interesting people and find inspiration. It can’t help to spend so much time in that apartment of yours. It’s the least whimsical place I’ve ever had the misfortune to drink a cup of tea in.’

‘I’m here now, aren’t I? Escorting you on an impromptu evening promenade, about to mingle with the set.’

‘I do appreciate that you’re trying, Perry. Really, I do. All the same, I think you spend too much time alone.’

‘I’m not alone. Mrs Ambrose comes and goes.’

‘Mrs Ambrose is a middle-aged charwoman. You need vibrancy and excitement in your life, not floor wax and sagging bosoms and woollen stockings.’

He laughs. ‘I can’t argue with that.’

‘I’ve been giving it some thought, as it happens. I know what you need.’

‘And what might that be?’

‘A muse.’

‘A muse ?’

‘Yes. A muse.’

‘And why would I want a muse?’

‘To spark your creativity. You need to find someone whose every word, every movement, leaves you so enraptured that you can do nothing but settle at the piano and write words of whimsy about them. Look at Noël Coward. I doubt he would have written anything notable if it weren’t for Gertie Lawrence. And Lucile Duff Gordon. How do you think she produced such incredible costumes for Lily Elsie – and for me? They adore those women so much they simply cannot wait to dress them or write songs or books about them.’ I feel rather pleased with myself as we walk on. ‘Yes. That’s absolutely what you need. A muse.’

Perry clearly isn’t convinced. ‘And where might one find a muse these days? Does Selfridge sell them? I hear he has all manner of whimsical things in his shop.’

‘Don’t be facetious. You need to look around. Take more notice of people.’ I cough and pull my collar up to my chin as we turn the final corner and walk back towards the entrance to the club. ‘Either that or put an advert in The Stage .’ I laugh at my joke as the doorman holds the door for us and we step inside.

The tantalizing beat from the jazz band drifts up the narrow stairs. The cloakroom attendant takes my coat. I turn to check my reflection in the mirrored wall tiles, twisting my hip and turning my neck to admire the draped silk that falls seductively at the small of my back. I’m glad Hettie chose the pewter dress, the fabric shimmers fabulously beneath the lights. I shake my head lightly, setting my paste earrings dancing. I shiver as a breeze runs along my skin. Murray’s is one of my favourite clubs in London. I feel safe here. I can let loose for a while and forget about things among the music and dancing and cocktails.

Turning on the charm, I glide down the stairs. My evening’s performance isn’t over yet.

Perry orders us both a gin and it from the bar. We sit at the high stools and sip the sweet cocktail, perfectly positioned for people to see us. I watch the band with their glorious café au lait skin. The pulse from the double bass and the shrill cry of the trumpet seep through my skin so that I can feel the music pulse within me. The bandleader acknowledges me, as he always does, and leads the band in my favourite waltz of the moment, ‘What’ll I Do’. I smile sweetly and applaud when the song ends.

When we are quite sure we’ve been noticed, Perry leads me to our table. The others are already there, the usual set of writers, poets, artists, and anyone who is vaguely interesting in London. Noël Coward, Elizabeth Ponsonby, Nancy Mitford, Cecil Beaton, and, of course, darling Bea, who – I am delighted to see – makes a special fuss of Perry. I kiss them all and settle into the seat between Noël and Cecil.

‘You were brilliant, darling!’

‘Simply divine. Your best yet, without a doubt.’

I wave their words aside. ‘You are all wicked and mean to tease me. You’ve been sitting here drinking cocktails all night. You didn’t even see so much as the HOUSE FULL boards outside.’

‘But she was splendid, of course,’ Perry adds as he pours us both a glass of champagne. ‘Regardless of what the notices might say in tomorrow’s papers.’

I ignore his teasing and take a long satisfying sip. The bubbles pop and fizz deliciously on my tongue. Do I care what the critics say? It’s been so long since I’ve taken any real notice of the reviews. I haven’t needed to. It has simply become habit to read flattery and praise. My housekeeper-cum-secretary, Elsie, cuts out the notices from all the papers and sticks them into a scrapbook with an almost obsessive diligence. The slightest mention of me falls victim to her scissors – photographs, passing references to supper at The Savoy, charitable events, after-the-show reports, costume reviews – nothing escapes her scissors. I tell her I really don’t give two figs what they say, but she persists. She says it is important to keep a record; that people will be interested in my career in years to come. She’s too polite to say ‘when you’re dead’, but I know that’s what she means, and it occurs to me that perhaps she is right. The more I think about tonight’s performance, the more I realize that the notices do matter. There’s an astonishing honesty required of oneself when faced with one’s own mortality. The notices and observations in Elsie’s silly little scrapbook will soon become the record of what I am – who I was. It is how I will be remembered. It matters immensely.