The Jewel Box
“Have you ever been in love?” he asked, without blinking.
In her head she saw a young man in uniform with red hair. She blinked the image away. “No,” she said. “Not really. How about you?”
“I loved a woman who died.”
“I’m sorry.” She looked away, gulped from her cocktail.
“Don’t be. She wasn’t.”
It was such an odd thing to say that it made her wonder if he’d made it up to shock her.
“It was a long time ago.”
“And there hasn’t been anyone since?” He seemed to invite this kind of talk—flirtatious in its frankness.
“Of course. I’m perpetually in love. It’s a grand way to be. You should try it some time. You might like it.”
Grace shook her head. “You talk about love the way other people talk about ice cream.”
He shrugged. “One is hot, the other cold. Both taste good.”
“Love isn’t something you can just choose to try.”
“Tell that to her.” Again he indicated the woman in gray. Her face wore an expression that was exquisitely sad. The man in the hat had hold of her hand.
“She doesn’t look like she’s having a ‘grand’ time of it,” said Grace.
Critical acclaim for Anna Davis’s previous historical novel,
THE SHOE QUEEN
“A wonderfully realistic denouement…. Touching.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Fiction at its best: fast-paced and dramatic with characters whose motives are rewardingly complex…. A fantastical version of a bohemian reality in which it is a joy to lose yourself.”
—Telegraph (UK)
“An enjoyable whirlwind of beauty and seduction, with a satisfying dark undercurrent.”
—Psychologies (UK)
ALSO BY ANNA DAVIS
The Shoe Queen
Cheet
Melting
The Dinner
Pocket Books
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Anna Davis
Originally published in Great Britain in 2009 by Doubleday a division of Transworld Publishers
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Davis, Anna, 1971-
The jewel box / by Anna Davis.
p. cm.
1. Woman journalists—Fiction. 2. Women—England—Fiction. 3. London (England)—History—1800-1950—Fiction. I Title.
PR6054.A89156J49 2009
823’.914—dc22
2008045263
ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-6347-4
ISBN-10: 1-4391-6347-2
Visit us on the Web:
http://www.SimonandSchuster.com [http://www.SimonandSchuster.com]
For Rhidian and Leo,
with love
Contents
I. The Dance
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
II. The Rivals
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
III. Flight
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
IV. Journeys
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I.
The Dance
Piccadilly Herald
The West-Ender
April 4, 1927
Last night, at the newly opened Salamander Dinner-Dance Club on Coventry Street (they serve one of London’s better steaks au poivre accompanied by brisk, stirring jazz), a louche gentleman in a top hat wreaked violent Charleston on me, and simply would not be shaken off. Today I am officially “In Recovery”—the kind that necessitates a night at home with a fish-paste sandwich and a mug of cocoa. For it’s not merely my head that’s aching—it’s not just the usual ringing of the ears, rasping of the throat and churning of the stomach. No, today my lily-white tootsies are black and blue, too. Reader, I can barely walk!
As you know, it’s been over a year since the Charleston stepped off the boat and took up residence in our better nightclubs. They dance it dandily in Paris and New York. So how much longer is it going to be before the Londoner learns how to do it properly? Men are generally the worst. There’s something, frankly, convulsive about those kicking, flailing legs. At the Salamander, you take your life in your hands when you step onto the dance floor. In fact, I wouldn’t even advise taking a table beside the dance floor. But many of the fairer sex are not so much better—really, there are a lot of farmyard hens strutting about the West End, pecking and flapping.
The solution? Lessons, of course. Trust me, girls, it’s a sound investment. I suggest any of you with a nagging suspicion that your Charleston may be of the feathered, clucking sort should seek out, posthaste, Miss Leticia (known to her friends as “Teenie Weenie”) Harrison, of Mayfair. Take heed: This might change your life. In an ideal world, one would of course take the hubby or boyfriend along to Teenie Weenie’s—but if he thinks he’s too fine and manly for classes, you’ll have to teach him yourself. Let’s face it, we’ve been educating our men in so many departments since long before we—that is, those of us over thirty—got the vote (NB: the under-thirties would have my sympathy were it not for the fact that I covet your tender youth), and we’ll be doing so for as long as men are men and women are women. Embrace your fate.
Two irritating comments that I regularly encounter, of an evening, now my fame is spreading:
“Miss Sharp, where do you find the stamina to go out all night every night? Your job must be the hardest in London.”
—and—
“What an easy job you have, Miss Sharp. All you have to do is go out and enjoy yourself and then tell us all about it.”
Also, I am outraged at the reports of various pretenders claiming to be me in order to bag good tables and complimentary cocktails. Doormen, if ever in doubt, ask “Diamond” to blow you a smoke ring. This is a very particular talent of mine, and should instantly reveal any fake gems. Oh, and by the way, I have never in my life had to ask for a free drink!
Diamond Sharp
One
The photograph shows a woman with flirtatious eyes and sharply bobbed hair. She is seated alone at a restaurant table with an empty champagne glass in front of her. Resting between the first two fingers of her gloved hand is a lit cigarette in a long ebony holder. From her lipsticked mouth, slightly open, issues a perfect smoke ring. The slogan above the photograph is simply, “Dare You?” The small print beneath the image explains that the tobacco in Baker’s Lights is toasted and does not aggravate the throat.
Mr. Aubrey Pearson tossed the proof onto the desk and leaned back against creaky leather upholstery. “Well?”
Grace Rutherfo
rd, from the hard wooden seat on the other side of the table, cleared her throat. “Well, Mr. Pearson, I was thinking…”
“Were you? Were you really?” The eyebrows moved toward each other in a deep frown. “Did you think for one moment about how our client would react to this?” He indicated the proof.
Grace took a breath. If only she was having this discussion with Mr. Henry Pearson, the older brother. He was altogether more freethinking. “I believe this campaign could increase Baker’s sales by about a third. Maybe more. We’ve never targeted women before—not for cigarettes—and it’s about time we did. This year, London girls are wearing their hair and dresses shorter than ever, copying the Hollywood flapper look. They want the life that goes with it too—dancing the Charleston all night, having romances with dashing young men. It’s the dream. Living life just a little bit wild. Doing things their mothers wouldn’t have done. They all smoke, you know, the Hollywood actresses.”
Mr. Pearson rubbed his head, where the hair was thinning. Perhaps it was thinning because he always rubbed it there, in just that spot. “Miss Rutherford, we absolutely cannot have an image of a girl smoking a cigarette in this advertising campaign. We have a reputation to uphold.”
“Oh, sir, that’s such bunkum. It’s about time Pearson and Pearson joined the modern age.”
“A word of warning.” Pearson’s voice was quiet now. “If I were you, I should think very carefully about what you plan to say next.”
“All right.” Grace swallowed. “Forget about the image. We don’t have to show a woman smoking. Imagine a dance floor full of couples. In the foreground a man extends a hand to a girl, inviting her to step out. The copy reads, ‘Will You? Won’t You?’ Here’s another: The girl is seated beside her beau in an open-top car. The line is, ‘How Fast are You?’”
Pearson pulled open a desk drawer and began to rummage about inside. Slamming it shut, he bellowed for his secretary, Gloria, to fetch an aspirin.
“Sir?”
“How long have you been with us, Miss Rutherford?”
“Almost ten years.”
He proffered a smile. It looked all wrong on his face—as though someone had glued it there. “You might well think, my dear, that London has changed considerably in those ten years.”
“Oh, it has.”
“But I would put it to you that not all of those changes are for the better. There are many people out there—many—who take that view. And at the heart of this ever-changing city, there is a fundamental core of values which remain unchanged, and which must remain so. A still, stable core, around which whirls a lot of flux and chaos. Pearson and Pearson is part of that core. That’s why we’re able to hold on to clients like Baker’s in the face of all the competition.”
“Sir, with respect—”
“Respect—yes, that’s a part of it, Miss Rutherford. Do you think it demonstrates respect for your employers and their clients when you arrive at the office an hour late, and visibly bleary? Or when you sit about the place, smoking cigarettes and exchanging jokes? Do you think it sets a good example to the typists and the secretaries?”
“But the other copywriters do just the same. And nobody seems to mind.”
Another of those glued-on smiles. “You’re an intelligent girl. I shouldn’t need to spell it out for you. And what the devil possessed you to put yourself in that blessed photograph? Stanley Baker’d laugh himself all the way down the road to Benson’s if I let him see that proof.”
The secretary appeared with two aspirin and a glass of water, set them down on the desk and retreated. In her wake came a distinctly uncomfortable silence.
“So,” said Grace. “Shall I hand in my notice?”
A chuckle. “My, what drama! You have spirit, that’s for certain. Go back and do some more thinking. You did hit on something with your idea about targeting women. But not this way. See if you can come up with something more…domestic. And as to the rest of it—”
“I know, sir. I understand.”
Ten minutes later, in her tiny office, Grace picked up the telephone and asked to be connected to Richard Sedgwick, the editor of the Piccadilly Herald newspaper.
“Dickie, I want you to meet me for dinner tonight.”
“Grace? Is that you?”
“Of course it’s me. Seven o’clock? I don’t much care where.”
“Sorry, old thing. Busy tonight.”
Grace drummed her fingernails impatiently on the desk. “What sort of busy? Work?”
Something that might have been a sigh but could easily have been a crackle on the line. “I’m not sure that’s any of your—”
“So it’s a girl. Not that dreadful Patsy again? It’s not her, is it, Dickie?”
“Grace. You know how fond of you I am, but—”
“That lisp is an affectation. Didn’t you realize? And the nose wrinkling. She’s playing the little girl. She thinks that’s what men want.” A frown. “It’s not, is it, Dickie?”
“I’m not seeing Patsy this evening.”
“Then who?” Becoming aware of an unusual silence among the typists outside the room, Grace extended her right leg and gave the door a sharp kick so that it slammed shut.
“I have to go and see that German picture. You know—the one that cost all the money. It’s on at the Pavilion.”
“Oh, that. Nobody’s going to Metropolis, Dickie. It’s depressing and preposterous. Evil machines and virgin girls—or was it the other way around? Quite, quite silly.”
“Thank you for your enlightened and knowledgeable view, dearest.”
“Not at all.” Grace slid a cigarette from the box on her desk and searched about for a book of matches. “What say we eat at the Tour Eiffel? You know how I hate it there, but I’d go anywhere for you, darling.”
“My, how selfless we are.”
“Then we could round the night off with a little party that Diamond’s been invited to.”
“So we’re going dancing now, too?”
Grace found her matches and struck one, the receiver wedged between ear and shoulder. “Seriously, Dickie. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Coming up Tottenham Court Road half an hour late, Grace was caught in an April downpour with no umbrella. There were no taxis, trams or buses in sight, and so she was obliged to scurry inelegantly through the end-of-day hordes; gutter water splattering up her ankles; gray rain soaking through her clothes in smeary patches; the scent of wet builders’ dust rank in her nostrils. As she hurried, she silently cursed her timekeeping (Grace was always half an hour late); her employers (for locating their offices on Piccadilly—simply not close enough to Percy Street, home of the Tour Eiffel); the weather (this was London, after all. Who didn’t curse the weather occasionally?); God (in whom she didn’t believe); and Dickie Sedgwick (for agreeing to meet her, and for liking the Tour Eiffel).
By the time she arrived at the restaurant the rain was heavier still. Running, head down, for the door, Grace collided, hard enough to make her teeth rattle, with a very solid person. A hand closed around her forearm, and she looked up into pale, blue eyes set wide apart in a broad face. The mouth was smiling—or perhaps it was just one of those mouths that’s shaped so that it always appears to smile.
“Are you married?” The voice was smoothly American.
“No.” The word was out before she could stop it. The hand still held her forearm.
“Good.” When he spoke, he seemed to be looking past her. She became aware of a taxi parked nearby, its motor running. The man had perhaps just got out of it. The driver would be watching.
“Excuse me.” She jerked free and moved haughtily toward the restaurant.
“Thirty-two, I should think.” His smile, reflected in the glass, was distorted. Jagged. “There’s a poignancy in your face.” He was delving in his pocket for change, stepping back to pay the driver. “Liquid and lovely.”
“I’m thirty, actually. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“It’ll ice over in a year or two,” said the man. “Always does.”
Before the war, the Tour Eiffel had been a haunt for the more avant-garde artists and writers; Augustus John, Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound. Later on the sketches and notes in the visitors’ book were added to by Charles Chaplin, Ronald Firbank and George Gershwin—and the restaurant became the favorite of a more glitzy, fashionable crowd. By 1927, it was a monument to itself, with prices to match. The paintings and etchings of varying quality which crowded its walls put Grace in mind of gravestones, albeit higgledy-piggledy crazily colored gravestones. This place traded on its Bohemian past. One could perhaps order an hors d’oeuvre of coddled memories followed by a main course of stewed nostalgia. Certainly, Dickie Sedgwick was quite at home here.
“Punctual as ever.” Dickie stood up to kiss her on the cheek. “Gracie, darling, you’re absolutely soaking!”
“It’s nothing. I shall be dry again directly.” Grace sat on a carved walnut chair. “Meanwhile you can amuse yourself by watching great clouds of steam rising off me.”
“Well, if you’re sure.” Dickie sat down. “I feel I should do something for you.”
“Just get me a drink, will you?”
“Try some of this.” He turned the wine bottle on the table so she could see its label. “It’s from the Rhône Valley, so Joe tells me. Frightfully good.”
“I’m sure it is, but I’m lacking a glass. Be a good fellow, and get Joe’s attention?”
He was still talking about the wine, and she was dabbing with her napkin at the damp patches on her black silk-crêpe dinner dress, when glancing up, she saw the broad-shouldered man from the street enter the dining room. He was wearing a white starched evening shirt and bow tie. Rudolph Stulik, the proprietor, was instantly at his side, leading him to the best corner table, fussing about over his comfort, lighting his cigarette. The pale blue eyes turned suddenly in Grace’s direction, and she looked away—down at the beaded jet buckle on her dress—and back up at Dickie. He had a crumpled weariness about him this evening. Not at all his dapper, ebullient self.
“You seem tired, Dickie. Is everything all right at the Herald?”