The Echo of Twilight Page 10

  Eventually he spoke. “A little dicky bird told me you were engaged to be married.”

  I took another sip from my glass, wondering who, exactly, his little dicky bird was. “No. That’s wrong. I’m not . . . nor ever was,” I added, and from the corner of my eye I saw him nod his head.

  The sky had changed from a washed-out blue to a luminous pink. Behind the black silhouette of the hills the full moon had begun to rise.

  I said, “Today was my birthday.” He was the first person I’d told.

  “No! . . . So it is a special occasion, and quite right, too, that you’re having a drink. And though I know better than to ask a lady her age, I’m wondering . . . ,” he said teasingly, tapping a finger on his chin.

  A lady, I thought. “Twenty-four,” I said.

  “Does anyone know? Does Ottoline know? Has Mrs. Lister baked you a cake?”

  “I haven’t told anyone. It seemed . . . inappropriate, irrelevant.”

  “Irrelevant? Wait here,” he said, and handed me his glass.

  I watched his dark shape disappear inside the doorway, finished my drink and took a sip from his. But the air was turning damp and chilled, and so I followed his path across the grass toward the lamp-lit windows. We collided in the lobby. He took the empty glasses from my hands. “As you haven’t given me much notice, I’m having to improvise. Do you have a dress, a birthday gown? Something you’d wear to a small soiree with a few reprobates?”

  Soiree and reprobates were not words in my vocabulary, but I knew what he meant and so I said yes, I did. Because I had one good dress, never worn, and intended for some occasion in the future. It had been Mrs. B.’s Christmas present to me, and made by her dressmaker in Bournemouth.

  “Well then, you have time to go upstairs and change. Celebrations commence in twenty minutes.”

  “Oh but, Mr. Stedman . . .”

  “No oh buts. Off you go.” He opened the door, and as I walked into the hallway, toward the staircase, he called after me: “And no more Mr. Stedman, please. My name is Ralph.”

  I was standing in my underwear and wondering what to do, when Ottoline tapped on the door and walked into my room—carrying what appeared to be dozens of her gowns.

  “You are naughty,” she said. “I had no idea it was your birthday.” She off-loaded the pile of dresses from her arms onto the bed. “I wasn’t sure if you had anything to wear, so I’ve brought you a few things to try on.” She looked me up and down. “Yes, I think we’re about the same size.”

  I had already taken my dress from the wardrobe, but when Ottoline saw it, hanging on the back of the bedroom door, she said, “You weren’t planning to wear this, were you?”

  “Oh no, not that old thing . . . That’s just—”

  “It looks like something my mother would have worn,” she interrupted.

  “It was a present, actually. From Mrs. Bart.”

  Ottoline rolled her eyes. “I might’ve guessed. You’re twenty-four, Pearl, not sixty-four.” Then she smiled and clapped her hands. “So, I’ve had the most marvelous idea. As it’s your birthday, I want you to allow me to dress you . . . to be your maid. What do you think?”

  But she didn’t wait for a reply. She began rummaging through the pile of gowns she’d brought into the room with her, some of which I recognized. “Blue . . . No, too cold . . . Black?” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “No, definitely not.”

  “I’m really not sure about any of this, my lady. It’s very kind of you and Mr. Stedman, but I’m not used to . . . and my birthday’s almost over, anyway.”

  She rose up and turned to me. “But you must have a celebration of sorts . . . please,” she added, clasping her hands together beseechingly, her eyes twinkling. “Your birthday is our tiny shred of normality. A frivolity, perhaps, but one we need . . . particularly now.”

  Particularly now . . . There it was again.

  My life had become queer and mad. The whole world had become queer and mad.

  “Try this one,” said Ottoline, seemingly oblivious to the madness and lifting a gown up from the bed.

  I had never worn a strap of pearls, never worn a diamond-encrusted headband—or any headband. I had never worn rouge, and I had certainly never worn—nor perhaps ever would wear again—a gown like the gold silk gown I wore that evening. But by the time Ottoline had finished with me, as I stood in front of the looking glass in my room, I appeared every inch a lady. And, for the first time in my life, I saw a thing of beauty staring back at me. Pearl Gibson, the once kitchen maid now lady’s maid, had gone. Vanished. Instead, there was someone new, and though unrecognizable to myself at first, as soon as Ottoline moved behind me and appeared in the glass, I remembered.

  Ottoline reached up, adjusted the headband and stared at me. “Beautiful,” she said. She moved over to the door, but when I followed her, she stopped, and without turning to me, she said, “No, you must come down on your own, Pearl. You must make your own entrance tonight.”

  None of it was right. And as I descended the staircase, I felt as though I were on a stage, acting a part I was little suited to play and had not practiced. I stood for a moment, listening to the voices on the other side of the door. I heard Ottoline: “Of course she told me she had no family, told me when I interviewed her. But I hadn’t realized she meant no one at all, and no home.”

  Then Ralph: “She thought her birthday was irrelevant. Inappropriate to mention.”

  “I really don’t think one can be expected to remember every single servant’s situation in life, or indeed birthday. And quite frankly, if you make a thing of one—you have to make a thing of them all, no?”

  Then, quickly and sounding a little agitated, came Billy: “I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with you, Felix. If you employ people in your home, I think you have a moral obligation to find out their circumstances and look after them.”

  Someone clapped hands—Ralph I guessed. And I took a deep breath, turned the handle and opened the door.

  There were only the four of them, and they had all dressed up: Ralph in a long, bright orange silk kimono; Billy in bow tie and a shorter but similar Chinese-looking jacket; Mr. Cowper in traditional white tie, and Ottoline in a dark purple gown with matching colored plumes in her hair. “And here she is!” said Ottoline, seeing me. Ralph leapt to his feet. He lifted a bottle from the silver ice bucket. Then came a loud pop, followed by a rendition of “Happy Birthday.”

  The only time anyone had made a toast to me before was when I turned sixteen. I had been working at a house in Kent at that time, and been desperately homesick, or rather, missing Kitty. I hadn’t seen her in almost six months, and it was my first birthday without her. She sent me a picture postcard with roses on the front, and on the reverse it simply said, Dear Pearl, Happy Birthday From Your Loving Aunt Kitty. There was a smudged cross beneath her name, and that cross was infinitely more beautiful to me than the tinted roses on the other side.

  And so I was thinking of her—Kitty—as I took my first sip of champagne, in a castle of sorts, in another country, with people I didn’t know, and the likes of whom Kitty had never met, nor could ever have imagined. And I was wondering if she’d be proud of me, and if she’d still recognize me. And I thought I might be dreaming, but if I was, I didn’t care. Because if it was a dream, I was determined to enjoy every single second of being treated as something more than I was: someone relevant.

  As soon as Billy put a record on the gramophone, Mr. Cowper asked Ottoline to dance, and I wondered if Ralph might ask me. Then Mr. Watts entered the room. He filled up our glasses, and as he filled mine, he slid me a look that seemed to begin with, In your position . . . And as happens when one stirs from a dream, everything felt new and strange again, and I was embarrassed for him to see me sitting there, all dolled up, wearing Ottoline’s jewels and gown, and drinking.

  The door closed. Ottoline sat down next
to me and patted my hand. “Don’t worry about Watts. He’s seen it all before—and far worse. And after all, it is your birthday.” Then she got up to dance again, and I saw Mr. Cowper put his hand on her bottom and her lift it away. I looked over at Billy, wondered what he made of it all. His mother’s lover was at least a decade younger than she was, and definitely nearer to Billy’s age than her own. And it didn’t seem right for Mr. Cowper to be behaving like that in front of Billy. But what was right? What was normal? We were at war and we were dancing, celebrating my birthday, an event rarely celebrated, and a bittersweet date to me—coinciding as it did with my mother’s passing.

  As I sipped my champagne, as I watched Ottoline and Mr. Cowper, I was for some reason reminded of Stanley and Eileen Poynter. “See you later,” she’d said. Stan, she’d called him. I wondered if he’d taken her to a tea dance, if she had given him what any normal fellow expected. I had been a fool, I thought, closing my eyes for a moment. For I knew then that Stanley Morton had been two-timing me with the sticky-fingered Eileen; that he was no different to the fellow at the A.B.C., the one who’d blown smoke rings and winked at me. He, Stanley, Mr. Cowper, Lord Hector and even my absent father were all players.

  “Who’s a player?”

  Ralph was leaning forward in his chair, staring at me.

  “Stanley Morton,” I said, feeling rather drunk.

  “Stanley Morton,” he repeated. “Did you care for him?”

  I glanced down at my dark brown leather shoes, wishing again that my feet were smaller, that I’d been able to wear a pair of Ottoline’s satin evening shoes. “Not really, not anymore.”

  At that moment, Billy sat down next to me on the arm of the sofa. He said, “It’s a damned shame we’re at war on your birthday, Pearl.”

  “Bloody good reason for a cease-fire,” said Ralph, altering tempo and picking up the large silver lighter from the low table between us. He kept his eyes fixed on me as he held it up to his cigarette, sat back in his chair, crossed his legs and then exhaled a plume of smoke.

  Billy picked up the lighter and began fiddling with it. Flick-flick . . . flick-flick . . . “Are you about tomorrow, old thing?” he asked Ralph. “It’s just that I’d like to speak to you about something . . . a private matter.”

  “Of course,” said Ralph, still watching me. “You know where to find me.”

  Billy put down the lighter. “And now, before I go to my bed and leave you lot to burn the midnight oil, I wonder if I can have the pleasure of a dance with the birthday girl.”

  I smiled. I’d been waiting for someone—Ralph—to ask me.

  Billy took my hand, led me in a slow waltz, and when the music stopped, he lifted it to his lips: “Thank you. I shall have sweet dreams now.”

  After Billy retired, Mr. Cowper took over the gramophone, and as he and Ottoline continued with their intimate party for two, I thought Ralph Stedman—a man who had said he hoped to dance with me one day—was never going to ask me. But he must have heard this thought, because within seconds he put down his glass, rose to his feet and took hold of my hands. He never asked; he simply pulled me onto my feet. And perhaps he knew that my head was spinning, because he held me close.

  He smelled of turpentine and warm wool, and suddenly everything shone brighter: china, glass, brocade and tasseled satin. Color and sound merged and blurred into one. And his warmth and his strength were newly familiar, and I thought, I know nothing about you, and yet I know everything you are. Then the music changed, became louder, and Ottoline shrieked and Ralph said, “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine . . . It’ll all be fine.” And as I placed my head on his chest, I thought, Don’t go; don’t leave me. And he said, “I won’t. I promise.”

  Later, we all laughed, because everything was funny, strange and funny, but then Ottoline burst into tears and everything seemed to stop for a moment. And I almost cried, too. And Ralph took my hand and led me over to a table where rolls of smoked salmon and cheese lay on a silver platter. And he told me to eat, and so I ate.

  “You must never again think your birthday is irrelevant,” he said. And when he raised his hand to my brow and adjusted my headband, I saw that Ottoline and Mr. Cowper had gone.

  I was staring at the clock, which was looking rather proud of itself on the table with fat ankles, when Ralph asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Is that three o’clock or a quarter after midnight?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No . . . But it is very quiet.”

  He got up from his chair, went over to the gramophone, rifled through the scattered records and put on some music. “Debussy,” he said, bending down and unbuttoning my shoes. Then he sat back down, and he smiled as he watched me, as I twirled about the floor.

  Chapter Nine

  First there was the pain: a dull and incessant throb beneath my eyelids, in my temples and at the base of my head. Every muscle in my body ached. Then came the vision: one of me—dancing about my employer’s drawing room, pausing from time to time to wag my finger at a china figurine, or at a clock. And I was mortified, lost in an anguish I had never before known. But then, slowly, came more: the vague recollection of climbing stairs while singing “Happy Birthday.” To myself.

  What had happened to me? How could I have fallen so far?

  Because I knew better: I had been warned from a young age about Drinking. Kitty had told me. She was an ardent supporter of the Temperance Movement and a member of the Band of Hope; I had gone with her to meetings and on marches, trudging along streets beneath lofty banners and singing, “B. I. B. L. E.—that’s the book for me!”

  I knew. Yes, I knew. Drink was, quite literally, mother’s ruin: a poison that obliterated good sense and sound judgment. A Good Time, Kitty said, was the start of any undoing. After that, it was a rapid downward spiral into immorality, depravity. Saving the souls of Good Time Girls had been one of her missions. I knew all of this. Or had, twenty-four hours earlier.

  Self-pity was no use: I was my mother’s daughter.

  I raised my head and saw my gown—Ottoline’s gown—draped over a chair; my discarded ugly brown shoes; my stockings and a headband lying on the floor. There was no question: My ruination was complete. I would have to resign.

  Dear Ottoline . . .

  No, that wasn’t right.

  My Dear Lady? My Lady? . . . It is with regret . . .

  Profound regret, surely?

  Then the door opened.

  “No, please don’t get up. Are you feeling quite horrid?” Ottoline asked.

  I nodded. The inside of my mouth had a bitter metallic taste, and my tongue seemed to be coated with glue. And I tried not to breathe when I tried to say, “I’m sorry, my lady.”

  “I do feel for you,” she said, staring down at me and frowning. “Champagne can make one feel quite beastly, particularly if one has a glass too many. I’ll have Watts bring up my raw egg cure.”

  A wave of nausea passed through me as I sat up. I said, “I’d rather not see Mr. Watts, if you don’t mind . . . In fact, I’d rather not see anyone at all before I go.”

  “Go? But where are you going?”

  “I’m not sure, my lady . . . Perhaps back to London.”

  She sat down on the bed, grabbed hold of my hand. “Oh, my dear, are you not happy here—with me?”

  I was confused. I stared back at her. “Yes, but . . . well, after last night, and then now, this morning . . . I thought you’d want me to go, to leave.”

  It was Ottoline’s turn to look confused. She shook her head. “Why ever would I want you to . . . Ah.” She closed her eyes for a second or two. “I understand, I think. You thought I’d be angry with you because you’ve overslept?”

  I nodded. “That . . . and last night. Drinking. Too much.”

  She smiled and gripped my hand tighter. “It was your birthday, and we had a jolly little p
arty to ourselves—in spite of everything. If I’d for one moment thought it was going to make you feel wretched, well—I would never have entertained Ralph’s idea. And as for drinking too much”—she shrugged—“one simply has to learn.”

  “So you don’t want me to resign?”

  She laughed. “Of course I don’t want you to resign. However, I do want you to stay in bed and rest. Sleep it off. You’ll feel better in a few hours. Billy and Felix have gone fishing, and I intend to put in a full day’s writing . . . So there’s really nothing spoiling,” she added, rising to her feet. “And take a walk later. Fresh air always helps.”

  It was early afternoon by the time I rose from my bed. Stirred from my dreams by ravenous hunger, I dressed quickly, then took Ottoline’s gown and headband and jewelry back to her dressing room and put them away. I went down to the kitchen and stood in the doorway, newly awkward and reluctant to enter. Mrs. Lister was rolling out pastry, Mr. Watts polishing silver. A dwindling light fell on the long pine table where he worked, quietly humming to himself. I moved on down the passageway, to the larder, where leftovers from luncheon lay out on the slate bench, and where I closed the door and stood for a while, tearing at a carcass, dipping chunks of cold meat into an unctuous white sauce. I’d never tasted anything so delicious.

  Almost restored, almost revived, I took a handful of strawberries and went outside. Beyond the shadow of the house, sunlight illuminated tiny particles of silver within the grit. And I thought: We have all come from this, but only some of us catch the light.

  And then I closed my eyes and concentrated.

  The hallway was dark but for one candle. Its flickering light danced upon the walls. He handed me my shoes and said, “I must leave now.” But he didn’t. He stared back at me, ran his finger across my brow, down my cheek and onto my lips. And I wanted him to kiss me. And I closed my eyes as I lifted my face to his. “Come and see me tomorrow,” he said. And then a door closed . . .