The Echo of Twilight Read online

  “I have two more girls from Mrs. Warren’s registry to interview this afternoon,” said Lady Ottoline, concluding the interview, “so if you’d like to go and do some sightseeing or shopping and come back here at . . . around five o’clock? I’ll be able to tell you my decision then.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Your Ladyship. I have another interview at five o’clock.”

  “I see,” she said, eyeing me. She waited a moment. “Your interview, is it by chance with Lady Hanbury?”

  “No, Your Ladyship.”

  “Lady Desborough?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s not with Mrs. Asquith, is it? I hear she’s looking again.”

  “If you don’t mind, Your Ladyship, I’d rather not say.”

  Lady Ottoline smiled. “I’m very pleased about that. Discretion is my first and foremost requirement.”

  Chapter Two

  Stanley was waiting as arranged by the statue of Eros at five o’clock, reading the newspaper, in his good suit and cap.

  “Hello, handsome.”

  He folded the crumpled sheets beneath his creased sleeve and stared at me as I looked about and allowed him time to take me in. I was used to this initial awkwardness; it happened every time we met, but after a few moments I turned to him. “Well?”

  “You look nice.”

  “What’s it say?” I asked, nodding to the paper under his arm.

  “The usual doom and gloom . . . Some archduke’s been assassinated.”

  The air was warm and his face was damp. Beneath the brim of his cap his pale skin shone with beads of sweat, and there was a scab at one side of his mustache where he’d cut himself shaving. I hadn’t seen him in more than two months, not since he’d last come down to Bournemouth. It had been a Sunday, my usual day off, and despite the cold wind blowing in off the sea, we’d walked back and forth along the promenade and up and down the pier. Everything was closed and we had nowhere to go, but I kept myself warm imagining a time when we might.

  It was a queer notion, a home of my own, because I’d never really had one. I’d spent the first few years of my life under my grandfather’s tin roof; then, after he passed away, Kitty and I had moved into lodgings, and I shared a room and a bed with her until I went into service.

  “Veez-a-veez the tea dance . . . ,” Stanley began. He liked speaking in Latin—at least I think it was Latin; he’d told me it was. “I’m afraid they’re a bit on the pricey side. And so is the Trocadero.”

  I’d met Stanley when I’d worked at a place on the outskirts of Winchester in Hampshire. I’d been a parlormaid and he’d been a footman, and—literally—on his way out. And I’m proud to say our romance didn’t start until after he’d left the household and begun writing to me from London.

  “So where shall we go?” I asked. “I’ve only got an hour or so before I need to head to the station.”

  “Well, there’s always the A.B.C.”

  I sometimes wondered if I built Stanley Morton up into something more than he was, if it suited me to have an absent sweetheart. Because despite Kitty’s Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and despite his good looks, there was often an element of disappointment in the reality of him. It wasn’t that I wanted a poet, and I didn’t really care about the Trocadero, but he might have thought to buy me some flowers—a bunch of violets, or a single rose, perhaps—from the flower seller a few yards away. And he might have planned where we could go, what we could do in place of his long-promised tea dance.

  I said, “Fine, let’s go to the A.B.C.”

  I’d once told Mrs. B. of my concern about Stanley’s lack of imagination. It wasn’t long after he’d mentioned marriage. Not that he proposed; he’d simply said, “Maybe we’ll get married one day.” I suppose it was more of a philosophical statement. Mrs. B. advised me not to set my expectations too high in that department. She told me that, in her experience, the masculine mind lacked the propensity for imagination. And bearing in mind she’d had five brothers, three sons and two husbands, I reckoned she probably knew more than most when it came to understanding the masculine mind.

  In truth, I had a whole two hours before my train to Bournemouth, but I didn’t want Stanley getting any ideas about going to the pictures. We’d done that the last time I’d come up to meet him, and it had been an ordeal: trying to concentrate on Mary Pickford’s heartbreak with Stanley Morton’s hands where they shouldn’t have been and his tongue in my ear. Afterward, we’d had words. He’d told me that it was only what any normal fellow expects, and that there were plenty of girls who liked it. Fine, I said; go with one of them. I’d known plenty of them, too: girls who’d go with men for the price of a cheap dress, then ten months later give away a baby. Poor fallen creatures like my mother.

  As we walked toward Shaftesbury Avenue, as I linked my arm through Stanley’s, he said, “So, how’d it go with Lady Otterby?”

  “Ottoline. Her name is Ottoline. And she’s a lot younger than Mrs. B.”

  “How old?”

  “Not sure . . . late thirties, maybe forty.”

  “Nice?”

  I nodded.

  “And you want it?”

  “I wouldn’t have come all the way up here if I didn’t want it.”

  “Ha, and there’s me thinking it was just an excuse to come and see me.”

  My little white lie about another interview had at first thrown Lady Ottoline. But it had also offered me an opportunity to pass a test—her test—on discretion. She didn’t normally offer jobs on the spot, she said; she liked to “cogitate.” I didn’t say anything. Her cogitation sounded like a private matter to me. But my silence paid off, and after some shuffling and rustling, a glance about the room and then back at me, a queer little laugh and then a sigh, she said, “When would you be able to start?”

  And so that was that. Seeing me to the lobby, Lady Ottoline shook my hand and told me she’d put everything in writing and send it out to me in that evening’s post.

  “I got it,” I said to Stanley. “I got the job.”

  He stopped dead in his tracks: “She offered it to you there and then?”

  I smiled. “She said she had no reason to look any further. I was perfect for the position.”

  The A.B.C. was packed and we were lucky to get a table. We had lamb chops, mashed potatoes, cabbage and peas, and bread and butter and tea, of course. I didn’t have a pudding, but Stanley had the apple pie and custard. It has to be said, the A.B.C. did a decent high tea—and it suited Stanley’s pocket. Working as a doorman at the Café Royal didn’t pay a great deal. He’d been there for more than two years, standing about, watching people come and go. When he’d first started, he’d had ideas about moving up, becoming a concierge, even going into management. But now that didn’t seem likely. Recently, he’d talked about looking for office work, a clerical position of some sort, but as far as I knew, he hadn’t done anything about it.

  “I have to hand it to you, Pearl,” said Stanley, licking custard off the back of his spoon, “you’re a one. I mean, coming up here and snapping up a position—just like that.” He shook his head. “I bet there’s hundreds of girls out there who’ve never been offered a job there and then from the likes of Otterby.”

  “Ottoline, Stanley. Her name is—”

  “You’re a bloody liar, Walter Giddings!” A woman at an adjacent table slammed down her cup and rose to her feet. She stood perfectly still for a moment as Walter Giddings continued to blow smoke rings up at the ceiling. Then she marched off across the packed room and toward the door, and Walter Giddings never so much as turned his head.

  She was better off without him.

  I looked back at Stanley. “As I was saying, her name is Ottoline. Lady Ottoline Campbell. She wants me to start as soon as possible . . . I’ll be moving about, traveling quite a bit . . . France, Northumberland—”
<
br />   “Northumberland?” Stanley interrupted. “That’s Scotland.”

  I smiled. “Not quite—but I’ll be going there, too. They have a place in Scotland as well.”

  It was better to get it all over with in one go, especially now he’d eaten. Men were always more docile once they had food inside them, Mrs. B. said. Stanley didn’t say much at all after that, and I settled the bill. I knew he was a little short, had not yet been paid. As I rose from the table, I made a point of narrowing my eyes at Walter Giddings. And he smiled and winked at me.

  “What a player he was.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Walter Giddings . . . I just hope she doesn’t take him back.”

  I slipped my arm through Stanley’s, and we walked on beneath the dirty-leafed trees, retracing our steps toward Piccadilly Circus and the Underground station. We both stopped when we heard his name, both turned, and then Stanley quickly pulled away his arm.

  “Is this your sister, then?” the girl asked, all breathless and pink cheeked.

  “Oh no . . . No, this is Miss Gibson. We used to work together.”

  “Ah, like us,” said the girl. She threw the stick of her ice lolly down on the pavement and wiped her hands on her skirt. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Her hand was sticky. I smiled.

  “Eileen—Miss Poynter,” said Stanley, “works over at the hotel.”

  “For my sins,” said Eileen, affecting a grimace and rolling her eyes heavenward. Then she looked back at Stanley. “So, has your sister already gone, then, Stan?”

  Stanley’s eyelids fluttered. “We must get on,” he said, taking hold of my arm. “Miss Gibson has a train to catch.”

  “Oh . . . I see. Well, nice to meet you . . . See you later, Stan.”

  “You and Eileen Poynter seem on very familiar terms,” I said as we neared the steps down to the Underground.

  He laughed. “Not jealous, are you?”

  “No. But why did she think I was your sister?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest.”

  “Did you tell her you had a sister?”

  We were right by the steps, and he stopped and turned to me: “Of course I didn’t tell her I had a sister . . . To be honest, I think she’s a bit touched.”

  “Oh?”

  “They have endless problems with her at work . . . getting her to remember stuff. Hopeless. Hopeless, she is.”

  “But why did she say, ‘See you later’? You said you weren’t going into work tonight.”

  “It’s a figure of speech, isn’t it? See you later? Gawd blimey, Pearl, it’s like the Spanish Inquisition with you.” He pulled out his handkerchief, pushed back his cap and wiped his brow. He raised his eyes to the overcast sky. “Feels like funder.”

  “Th . . . thunder.”

  We stood for a few minutes, glancing about and not at each other, watching the pigeons pecking at litter-strewn flagstones, the flower seller packing up her stall, the newspaper boy as he called out about the murdered archduke.

  “Well, I’d best get on,” I said.

  “Right you are.”

  “I’ll drop you a line as soon as I know what’s what.”

  “Yes, do that.”

  “And I’ll send you the address . . . You will write to me, won’t you?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Good-bye, then.”

  He lowered his head and kissed my cheek. “Toodle-oo . . . Safe journey.”

  I wanted him to say something more. I wanted him to say, Don’t forget I’m very fond of you—like he’d said last time—but he didn’t. And though I turned to wave to him as I descended the steps, he’d already gone. And almost immediately I felt regret, and almost immediately I felt that familiar longing. I wished I’d told him the truth about my train, wished I’d allowed him to take me to a picture house and then accompany me to the station. If I had, perhaps he’d have told me he loved me. Because, you see, no one ever had, not even Kitty.

  Chapter Three

  And yet the whole kindly phase of my early life was due to her, my Kitty. And I can still see her, hear her and feel the warmth of her papery hand against my cheek.

  Kitty. She was white haired and wise by the time I was born. And I was perhaps four and almost the same height as the range when she reordered my universe and explained to me that she was not in fact my mother, but that I had once, very briefly, been in possession of one. There was no mention of any father, not then. But a few years later, shortly after my grandfather—Kitty’s brother—passed away, and at a stage in my life when I hungered for answers, she told me I had also had a father. I knew from her tone that he, too, was gone, and I asked her two simple questions: Was he a nice man? She couldn’t say; she had never known him. What was his name? She couldn’t recall; it was a long time ago.

  Revelations can only be deemed such if they actually reveal something, and for me, the knowledge that I had had a mother and a father, and that I was, it seemed, just like everyone else, offered only a vague sense of disappointment. My parents were nothing more than nameless, featureless shapes floating in the dim and distant past, but I felt no sadness or grief, because I had never known them, and I had Kitty.

  I’m not sure how old I was when I realized that my mother had not walked to the twilit Thames for a paddle after my birth, but had gone there to submerge herself and take her own life. I’m not sure how old I was when I realized my parents had not been married. But Kitty must have said something, or alluded to the fact, for I knew and understood the shame, and why it pained her to speak about my mother, her niece. I understood that the things best not spoken of were in fact only two people.

  Thus, my mother’s name was rarely if ever mentioned, and my father’s never at all. My childhood and adolescence became concertinaed, its folds harboring the debris of unconcluded lives, lives I had no desire to emulate. Like Kitty, I tried not to dwell on the torment of my mother’s final moments; like Kitty, I elected to spare my father from judgment by forgetting he’d ever existed.

  Like Kitty . . .

  Without a penny to her name, my Kitty was always neat and tidy. She was proud, dignified, abstemious and God-fearing. Old-fashioned, inherently superstitious, she appeared unconflicted by her pagan rituals and her devotion to God: watching the skies for signs and portents of doom or good fortune; habitually throwing salt over her shoulder, knocking on wood or saluting magpies; and rejoicing at the sight of a shooting star or four tiny leaves of a clover. She was the sweetest mass of contradictions with her pity for the poor and her awe of the gentry, her love of finery and her frugality, her mischievous humor and her priggishness. And in the absence of knowledge, she always fell back on a proverb.

  In fact, Kitty was as good at proverbs as I was at upping sticks and moving county. Something better always lay in the next one, my destiny in destination. And so, like a small star in transit and at the mercy of the universe, I impaled myself on fate. And fate now had a name: Ottoline. Thus, ten days after my interview, I found myself back in London, but not to stay; I was, as they say, passing through.

  And I was idling over a cup of tea in a far corner of the refreshment room at King’s Cross station, watching people come and go and wondering where they were all headed and why. I was thinking about Stanley and the letter I’d written to him days before, and the half crown Mrs. B. had pushed into my hand along with an orange and her blessing, and wondering whether Northumberland would have any decent shops, and if Biarritz would be the place for a big hat. I was thinking about all of this when a shock of golden hair caught my eye.

  And I don’t for one moment imagine I was the only person struck by the light in the drab confines of the busy refreshment room that day. I don’t for one moment imagine I was the only person drawn to an aura so bright, it was as though the sun itself had settled on him to do its work. For he shone, and around him emanate
d a warmth like nothing I had ever experienced.

  He wore no hat, no tie, and was dressed in the pale colors of warmer climes, his clothes creased and disheveled from what had undoubtedly been a long journey, and had a dusty knapsack slung over one shoulder, a well-worn leather portmanteau in his hand. A colonial, I thought, watching him as he sat down, perhaps returned home from India for a while.

  Bent over his paper, an elbow resting on the table, palm against his forehead, tanned fingers in his hair, he struck the pose of one of those ancient sculptures Stanley and I had seen at the British Museum. One of those sculptures cordoned off by a thick red rope. One of those sculptures I had longed to reach out and touch.

  From time to time he glanced up and around, as though to check on who was there. Was he waiting for someone—a woman, perhaps? Was there to be a longed-for reconciliation, there, in the refreshment room? I longed for her to appear—to see what she looked like, witness their meeting; but in my distraction I had forgotten the time, and so reluctantly, hot and a little flustered, I rose to my feet and weaved my way through the scattered tables and chairs, and past him. But outside, as I stood staring upward, searching the board for my train, a deep male voice said, “Please allow me to be of assistance.”

  Standing under a shaft of sunlight, his hair brighter than ever, he smiled as he picked up my case. “I’m not surprised you were struggling with this . . . I hope there’s not a body in here.”

  I tried to laugh. Inside my case were eleven novels, two volumes of poetry, my Bible and prayer book, the encyclopedia and Guide to Wildflowers Mrs. B. had given me, my two work skirts and blouses, a day gown and Sunday frock, an alarm clock, my wash bag, the brush and mirror Kitty had left to me, my nightdress, Kitty’s shawl, my winter coat and boots, a pair of galoshes and an empty photograph frame I’d won in the League of Pity raffle. Inside my suitcase was everything I owned.