Hazel Gaynor - The Girl From The Savoy

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Hazel Gaynor - The Girl From The Savoy» — ознакомительный отрывок электронной книги совершенно бесплатно, а после прочтения отрывка купить полную версию. В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: unrecognised, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

The Girl From The Savoy: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «The Girl From The Savoy»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

‘Addictive, charming and gleaming with Jazz Age glitz’ The LadyThe fabulous new novel from the author of The Girl Who Came HomeDolly Lane is a dreamer; a downtrodden maid who longs to dance on the London stage, but the outbreak of war takes everything from her: Teddy, the man she loves – and her hopes of a better life.When she secures employment as a chambermaid at London’s grandest hotel, The Savoy, Dolly’s proximity to the dazzling guests makes her yearn for a life beyond the grey drudgery she was born into. Her fortunes take an unexpected turn when she responds to an unusual newspaper advert and finds herself thrust into the heady atmosphere of London’s glittering theatre scene and into the sphere of the celebrated actress, Loretta May, and her brother, Perry.All three are searching for something, yet the aftermath of war has cast a dark shadow over them all. A brighter future is tantalisingly close – but can a girl like Dolly ever truly leave her past behind?

The Girl From The Savoy — читать онлайн ознакомительный отрывок

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «The Girl From The Savoy», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

The church bells chime the hour. Time to go back to the Monday wash and the predictable routines that carve out the hours of a maid-of-all-work like me. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I fold the pages and return them to my pockets. I turn my back on the distant puffs of smoke from Teddy’s train and walk along the platform. The surface is icy and I go cautiously, my footing unsure. I slip a little, steady myself, and keep going. Crossing the tracks, I step onto the frosted grass verge that crunches satisfyingly beneath my boots. On firmer ground, my strides lengthen and I walk faster, and all the while the question nags and nags in my mind: Am I walking away from my future, or walking toward it?

I don’t have an answer. It is not mine to give.

War holds all the answers now.

ACT I

Hope

London, 1923

To the question, ‘Are stars worthwhile?’ I must give the elusive reply, ‘There are stars and stars.’

– C. B. Cochran, the Weekly Dispatch, 1924

1

Dolly

‘That’s the fascinating thing about life, Miss Lane. All its wonderful unpredictability.’

‘It is as simple as this: a person can be unpunctual or untidy, but if they intend to get on in life they certainly cannot be both.’ I’ll never forget these words, nor the housekeeper who barked them at me as I skulked back to the house – late and dishevelled – from my afternoon off. I’d been walking with Teddy in the summer rain and completely lost track of time. It was worth being scolded for. ‘You, Dorothy Lane, are a prime example of someone who will never get on in life. You will never become anything.’ It was the first time I was told I wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t the last.

I was in my first position in service at the time. Maid-of-all-work. ‘Maid-of-all-fingers-and-thumbs, more like,’ the housekeeper groused. Peggy Griffin was her name – ‘Piggy’ as I called her in private, on account of her stubby nose and hands like trotters. Piggy didn’t take to me, and I didn’t take to her. I didn’t take to domestic work either for that matter. I suppose it didn’t help that my thoughts were usually anywhere else other than the task in hand.

‘Dolly Daydream’ was the nickname I earned from the maids at Mawdesley Hall. Open windows and doors left ajar are a gift to a girl with keen ears and a head full of dreams. Music from the gramophone player set my feet itching to dance as I mangled the Monday wash. Snatched fragments of conversations drifted along the corridors as I swept and polished, filling my head with thoughts of the stars of the West End stage, the Ziegfeld Follies, Broadway – all of it a distraction from the dreary routine of work, from war, from my fears of Teddy being called up. I may have lost many things in the years since I first felt those naive desires, but I held on to my dreams with a stubborn determination worthy of a Lancashire lass. The longing for something more has never left me. I feel it like a fluttering of wings in my heart.

I feel it now, as I shelter from the rain, huddled in the doorway of a watchmaker’s shop on the Strand. My attention is drawn to the posters on the passing omnibuses: Tallulah Bankhead, Gertrude Lawrence, Loretta May. The stars whose photographs and first-night notices I cut from newspapers and stick into my scrapbooks; the women I admire from high up in the theatre gallery, stamping my feet and shouting my appreciation and wishing I was on the stage with them, dressed in silver chiffon. They call us gallery girls: domestics and shopgirls who buy the cheap tickets and faithfully follow our favourite stars with something like a hysteria. We long for the glamorous life of the chorus girls and principal actresses; for a life that offers more than petticoats to mend and bootlaces to iron and steps to scrub. But I don’t just want to escape a life of drudgery. I want to soar. So I care for this restless fluttering in my heart as if it were a bird with a broken wing, in the hope that it will one day heal and fly.

I jump at the sound of a sharp rap on the window beside me. I turn around to see a hard-featured gentleman scowling at me from inside the shop, mean-looking eyes glowering behind black-rimmed spectacles. He says something I can’t hear and flaps his hands, shooing me away as if I were a dog salivating outside the butcher’s shop. I stick my tongue out at him and leave the doorway, hurrying along, hopping over puddles, my toes drowning like unwanted kittens inside my sodden stockings.

I pass bicycle shops and tobacconists, wine merchants, drapers and milliners, the rain falling in great curtains around me as I catch my reflection in the shop windows. Straggly curls hang limply beneath my cloche, all my efforts with curling irons and spirit lamps ruined by the rain. My new cotton stockings are splashed with dirt and sag at my ankles like folds of pastry, the rubber bands I’ve used as makeshift garter rolls clearly not up to the job. My borrowed coat is two sizes too big. My third-hand shoes squeak an apology for their shabby existence with every step. Piggy Griffin was right. I am an unpunctual untidy girl. A girl who will never get on in life.

I dodge newspaper vendors and sidestep a huddle of gentlemen in bowler hats as tramcars and motorcars rattle along the road beside me, clanging their bells and tooting their horns. Cries of the street sellers and the pounding hooves of a dray horse add to the jumble of noise. My stomach tumbles like a butter churn, excited and terrified by the prospect of my new position as a maid at The Savoy hotel.

The Savoy. I like the sound of it.

With my head bent down against the slanting rain, I take the final turn down Carting Lane, where I collide spectacularly with a gentleman hurrying in the opposite direction. I stagger backwards, dropping my travel bag as he takes a dramatic tumble to the ground. It reminds me of a scene from a Buster Keaton picture. I clap my hand over my mouth to stop myself laughing.

‘I’m so sorry! Are you all right?’ I raise my voice above the noise of the rain and the hiss of motorcar tyres through puddles. ‘My fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’

Dozens of sheets of paper are scattered around him, plastered to the sodden street like a child’s hopscotch markings. He attempts to stand up, slipping and sliding on the wet paving stones. I offer my hand and an arm for him to balance on. He grasps hold of both and I pull him upright. He is surprisingly tall when he’s vertical. And handsome. Rusted stubble peppers his chin. His lips are crowned with a slim sandy moustache, a shade lighter than his russet hair; the colour of fox fur. I really want to touch it, and clench my fists to make sure I don’t.

‘Are you hurt?’ I ask, bending down to pick up his pages.

‘I don’t think so.’ He shakes water from his coat like a dog just out of the sea and stoops to join me, scrabbling at the edges of the papers stuck to the pavement. ‘Feel like a damned fool, though. Are you hurt? That was quite a collision!’ He speaks like the man from the Pathé newsreels at the picture palace, all lah-de-dah and lovely.

I check myself over. ‘I’ve a ladder in my stocking, but nothing that a needle and thread won’t fix. At least I managed to stay on my feet. Should’ve been looking where I was going.’

‘Me too. It was completely unavoidable.’ He looks at me, the hint of a smile dancing at the edge of his lips, his eyes deep puddles of grey that match the weather perfectly. ‘Or perhaps it was necessary.’

We grin at each other like the greatest fools, as if we are stuck and neither of us is capable of pulling away, or doesn’t want to. London fades into the background as the rain becomes a gentle hush and the cries of the street vendors blend into a waltz in three-four time. For a perfect rain-soaked moment there is nothing to do, nowhere to be, nobody to worry about. Just the melody of a rainy London afternoon, and this stranger. I catch my reflection in his eyes. It is like looking into my future.

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «The Girl From The Savoy»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «The Girl From The Savoy» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «The Girl From The Savoy»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «The Girl From The Savoy» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x