BooksBarbecue
Back One Enchanted Evening Save as PDF
Chapters (50)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. The Grand Masquerade Ball
  5. Five Months Earlier . . .
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. September 1936
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. October 1936
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-one
  29. November 1936
  30. Chapter Twenty-two
  31. December 1936
  32. Chapter Twenty-three
  33. Chapter Twenty-four
  34. Chapter Twenty-five
  35. Chapter Twenty-six
  36. Chapter Twenty-seven
  37. Chapter Twenty-eight
  38. Chapter Twenty-nine
  39. Chapter Thirty
  40. Chapter Thirty-one
  41. Chapter Thirty-two
  42. Chapter Thirty-three
  43. Chapter Thirty-four
  44. Chapter Thirty-five
  45. Epilogue
  46. A New Year
  47. Extract from Anton Du Beke’s next novel’
  48. Acknowledgements
  49. About the Author
  50. Letter from Author

But by then, she was already gone, marching across the reception hall as if she would rather be anywhere else in the world.

December 1936

December 1936

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-three

image

THE LESS HÉLÈNE DWELLED UPON these last few weeks, the better. The mornings in the studio, taking Nathaniel White’s direction as he showed her his new take on Maxwell Stuart’s classic double reverse spin (a lumpen mess which ended in Hélène standing woodenly while Nathaniel pirouetted ostentatiously around her); the afternoon demonstrations, in which it was only Nathaniel’s ego being exhibited to the crowds; the evenings in the arms of men she would have crossed the street to avoid – and all while Sybil, her Sybil, was growing and changing at Noelle Archer’s home. Perhaps it was the dark skies over London that were hardening her mood, for by mid-November the first flurries of the winter’s snow had brought the trams and omnibuses of London town to a standstill. Or perhaps it was the ballroom itself. It too was changing. She remembered the long hot days of summer, when the dressing rooms were filled with laughter and cheer: she and Raymond in the studio every morning, limbering up for the demonstration dances, daring each other to perform ever more exacting stunts that might dazzle the crowds. She remembered the way they’d collapse together, the dancers and musicians, at the end of a long night in the ballroom – how it was always Louis Kildare who produced the magnum of champagne and shared it around. And most of all she remembered the sense that, no matter how tough life outside was, theirs was a precious, gilded world: their own little bubble inside the Buckingham Hotel.

She missed Raymond. This morning Nathaniel had taken her to the studio and made her dance alone for a whole hour performing his choreography, demanding she follow his every instruction. Hélène had stood there and seethed. I’ve been dan-cing since you were a choirboy, she thought, and yet you stand there, telling me how to move in my own ballroom. Every time I make a suggestion. Every time I have an idea . . .

Tonight, after the final dance, Hélène didn’t linger with Louis and the others in the dressing rooms. She marched, instead, to the upper storeys, knocked directly on Raymond’s door and collapsed in the chair at the side of his dresser.

‘You need to get better,’ she said. ‘You need to get better now. He has me standing there while he cavorts around me. Like I’m a . . . maypole!’

Then, together, they exploded with laughter.

Raymond gathered himself. ‘You shouldn’t make me laugh like that, Hélène. If I break more ribs . . .’