The Jewel Box Read online

  She’d gotten up and taken hold of his hand and he’d looked up at her with surprise and confusion. They’d climbed the stairs in silence and gone quietly to her bedroom, where their lovemaking was gentle and melancholy. Afterward, huddled with him in the single bed, finishing up her brandy, Grace had found she was reeling with the sadness of it—the futility of the attempt they’d each made to escape their loneliness through the sex act, or at least to share the loneliness.

  “We shouldn’t do this again.” It was Dickie who’d spoken. The words were in her head too and she’d been preparing herself to speak them aloud. It was such a relief to know he felt the same way as she did. It made her want to hug him. She’d been about to agree, vigorously, when he added: “There’s still something special between us, Grace. We shouldn’t squander it this way.”

  They were eating chocolate cake in the bed, Grace and O’Connell, and drinking champagne. Scattering crumbs over and between the crisp linen sheets. He had announced he was peckish and pushed the bell push marked “waiter.” The waiter then appeared so rapidly that Grace couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been standing behind the door the entire time, watching them through the keyhole.

  “So it’s true. You can get absolutely whatever you want just whenever you want it at the Savoy,” she said.

  He took a bite and passed the remains back to her, leaning against the cushioned headboard and grinning. “Sweetheart, I’ve always been able to get whatever I want whenever I want it.”

  “You like things carefully orchestrated, don’t you?” She licked her fingers. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was you who started the rumor about tonight’s supposed reading. You’d have done it just to see who’d turn up. Just to have a secret little laugh at them all under your fake beard.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think that of me? Did you have that thought racing around in your head while you sat on a folding chair in your ginger wig and hat, waiting?”

  “You have no idea how much I regret the wig and hat, Dexter.”

  “I told you not to call me Dexter.”

  “Then what do I call you?”

  “Come here. Let’s get down among the chocolate crumbs.”

  She was so aware of his strength when he took hold of her again. He could throw you bodily across the room with barely an effort and you’d lie there all broken and crumpled, and how glorious it would be to be broken by him.

  “Happy?” he asked her afterward, as they lay side by side.

  “I don’t know.” Now that the heat had ebbed away out of her, she felt ashamed of her weakness. She’d believed herself to be taking strong and decisive action, as she walked along the Strand earlier. But it was weakness, not strength, that had brought her here to him. He hadn’t had to so much as lift a finger to get her into his bed. That key had been enough to make her deliver herself up to him like a birthday present. “I don’t know where I am with you.”

  “You want me to tell you I love you or something? Sex isn’t love. I wouldn’t have thought I’d need to explain that to a woman of the world such as yourself.”

  She sat up against the headboard, drew her legs up under the blankets to hug her knees. “You once told me you’re perpetually in love. That love makes us feel alive.”

  “Trouble is, you’re too used to men falling in love with you. There’s enough bewitchery in you to make it happen pretty reliably. You decide you want a man and you click your fingers, and down he goes—prostrate on the floor. But think about it. Did you really expect that from me? Is that really who you want me to be?”

  She held her knees even tighter. Scrunching herself into a ball. “I wanted you to telephone me or send me a note.”

  “Sure you did. But don’t you see it’s better this way?” He reached for the cigarettes on the bedside table.

  “For you.”

  “For both of us.” He passed the cigarette across. “Grace, you’re not in love with me any more than I am with you. If I’d done all the right things, the predictable things, you’d already have tired of me. I’d have been firmly dispatched with a one-liner in your column: ‘Girls, you’d have a more exciting evening with one of his books than with him’—am I right?”

  “Maybe.” She blew a smoke ring and then stubbed out the cigarette.

  Their third time was dreamy and slow. Perhaps it was the effect of the alcohol, but their bodies seemed not to be in the bed or the hotel room at all. It was as if they were in midair. Her eyes locked on to his and she couldn’t allow herself to look away, feeling that if she did so, she would fall, and it would be a long way down.

  At some point it must have ended. They must have dozed off, for Grace was dreaming about Margaret the typist, her coiled black hair transformed into a snake. John Cramer was in the dream too, playing a wooden flute, and the hair snake uncoiled and reared up to its hypnotic tune.

  Five

  “Sit down, Miss Rutherford.”

  Mr. Henry Pearson didn’t look up from his paperwork.

  “Thank you, sir.” She sat on the visitor’s chair, gazing around at the many miniature oil paintings of horses on the brownish-green, baize-covered walls. Walking into this office was like stepping back into a bygone era. Stale air, floating dust particles, creaking chairs, a very specific sort of silence rather like the silence of a library.

  Her focus shifted from the room in which she now sat to a brighter, sunnier vista. After a rather sheepish breakfast at the Savoy, she and O’Connell had taken a walk along Victoria Embankment in the bright blue morning. Heavily laden boats were plowing busily by, churning up the water, making it froth and sparkle. There was as much traffic on the river as on the roads and bridges. London was pulsing with life, and Grace found herself thinking of the blood pumping through her own arteries. Walking beside O’Connell, her hand held in his, she’d been happier than happiness…

  “Idle person. One who squanders money or opportunity.” This was spoken loudly, so that Grace jumped. Mr. Henry’s head was still down.

  “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “Seven letters.” At last he looked up over his glasses, thick eyebrows raised. In front of him, she saw, was a newspaper crossword.

  Grace swallowed. “Wastrel, sir?”

  “Indeed.” His smile was too large for the occasion, and vanished after only a second or two. “Obvious, when you come to think of it.” Then his head was down again, presumably to write the word into his crossword—and yet she didn’t think he did so. Instead, he seemed lost in some invisible detail, leaving her to stare at his bushy Victorian whiskers. His silver-topped cane was resting in a porcelain stand in the far corner of the office, along with an umbrella and an odd-looking object that might have been a suction plunger (though what would he want with one of those?).

  How odd it had been to be out with O’Connell in the brightest daylight, beside the silvery, enticing river. A man like him should surely exist only in bars, restaurants and hotel rooms, softly lit and shrouded in smoke, husky laughter and erudite evening quippery. Yet there he was. There they were, a couple of night creatures out on the loose in the early morning. It had felt almost normal, almost natural.

  Mr. Henry laid down his pencil and sat scrutinizing her. If only she wasn’t still in yesterday’s dress. She kept a spare outfit at the office for just this sort of eventuality, but had forgotten, today, that it was at the cleaner’s. She’d been about to nip out to fetch it when Mr. Henry’s secretary had knocked on her door. Still, she hadn’t seen Mr. Henry yesterday—perhaps he wouldn’t realize. There was such a reek of smoke about her, though, and she was sure there must be a kind of abandon in her appearance. A wild look in her eyes…

  “My dear, I thought perhaps you might be tired of your occasional—or, really, not so occasional ‘chats’ with my brother on the subject of your ongoing performance and general demeanor. It occurred to me that you might have something to say to me about it all? Something redemptive, possibly? And since Aubrey is now sufficiently vexed that h
e’s about to wash his hands of you altogether, I thought I should, as it were, step into the breach.” While he was speaking, he made a steeple of his fingers; collapsed it; made another steeple.

  “Well, Mr. Pearson, I…”

  She and O’Connell, hand in hand by the river. As their walk had continued, she’d felt their togetherness, their “coupleness,” becoming more real. Her confidence had grown, along with her curiosity. Under the shadow of Blackfriars Bridge, where the air was rank with rotting wood, sewage, dead things moldering on the silt bed, all mingling with industrial fumes and the distant whiff of tallow rendering, she’d started asking about Cramer, probing for O’Connell’s side of the story just as Cramer himself had predicted.

  “Eva was unique,” O’Connell had said. “More alive than anyone I’ve ever known. Lived only in the present—to hell with the consequences. You never knew where you were with her because she didn’t know who she was from one moment to the next. She was my first love. Perhaps she was my only real love.”

  Even hearing him talk about a past love in this way was difficult. “That’s the way children are,” Grace had said. “She sounds like a child.”

  He’d blown a trail of smoke into the wind and passed the cigarette across to her. “Maybe. She was crazy, that’s for sure. She wasn’t cut out for marriage.”

  “And yet she married Cramer.”

  “It was a huge mistake, that’s what she wrote me. She wrote me lots of letters all those times he put her in the hospital. Asylum, I should say. That’s what he did to her, Grace. Shut her away. In the end she killed herself.”

  “What?”

  “It was tragic, of course, but entirely in character. Eva wasn’t someone who would ever have settled down the way Cramer wanted. It’s impossible to imagine her growing old.”

  “Miss Sharp?”

  SNAP.

  Mr. Henry had reached across the desk and clicked his fingers right in her face. This room was terribly hot. What had he just called her?

  “Yes, you did hear right. I know about your other persona. Your other little job.”

  Grace touched her hand to her forehead, just gently. “How…?”

  “You’re rather more naïve than I’d have expected, young lady. A secret of that sort doesn’t stay secret for long. Not in the world of newspapers.”

  The sun had grown stronger over the river. Reflecting and refracting off the water in dazzling darts of light. Someone on one of the boats had been singing in a deep baritone. The voice was operatic and resonant, but Grace couldn’t spot the singer, no matter how hard she looked.

  “Cramer blames me for Eva’s death,” O’Connell had said. “I’m a convenient scapegoat for him so that he doesn’t have to look closer to home.”

  “But how can he think it’s your fault?”

  “He’d have you believe I pillaged our shared experiences when I wrote The Vision, that I actually stole a part of his and Eva’s lives and made it public property in a horribly distorted form. He believes she couldn’t cope with that, and that it broke her down. Now he’s taking revenge by writing his own novel.”

  “Are you sure? I thought he was a journalist.”

  O’Connell made a face. “He told me so himself. Made it a kind of threat.”

  “So what’s it about? Is it his version of what happened between the three of you? Does he have a publisher?”

  “I don’t know.” He threw his cigarette butt into the river. “All I know is that I’ve just spent five years out in the wilderness trying to get away from all this. And John Cramer is determined not to let it go.”

  “Remarkable bit of work, that column of yours.” Pearson’s fingers made a steeple. Then another.

  “Really, sir? Thank you.” She knew it wasn’t a real compliment though. O’Connell and the river walk were evaporating now. The solid stuff of her life—Mr. Henry and his office, the dull and the everyday—was becoming vivid and worrying.

  “Oh yes. But if you don’t mind me saying so, you have a problem. It’s rather like the occasions when I ask Miss Hanson out there to make me a little snack. Perhaps a sandwich or two filled with Potter’s meat spread. Miss Hanson’s sandwiches are always spread just a little too thin.”

  Grace swallowed and felt herself tense. Beneath the desk her feet were wrapped tightly around the legs of her chair.

  “It isn’t a good idea to spread yourself too thin, Miss Rutherford. It’s not for me to tell you which path you should choose to follow in your life. But you do need to choose a path and stick to it. It isn’t enough just to be talented.”

  “I understand, sir. I am serious about this job, sir.” And she was now. She was.

  “Right then.” He rustled the newspaper in front of him.

  “Thank you, sir.” Realizing this was her dismissal, she got to her feet.

  “Oh, Miss Rutherford…” He was writing something into his crossword. “The Potter’s account is back with us. I thought you might like to know.”

  The horses in those paintings on the walls: All of them were caught midjump. Not one had a single hoof on the ground.

  Piccadilly Herald

  The West-Ender

  May 2, 1927

  Thank you, darling readers, for the veritable cacophony of agreement that Good Girls are Dull. Truly you are my sisters in high-spiritedness. Together we’ll make our own Charleston-dancing, bob-cutting, cigarette-smoking contribution to Darwinian evolution, while the dissenters (there were a few in my postbag, I must admit) sit at home embroidering moral sentiments in cross-stitch and going to bed early. For those who have shown an interest, all is progressing very nicely now with that Handsome Devil, and this hasn’t come about through sitting and waiting and being demure.

  Life is so much better this week. Wouldn’t you agree? This newly gorgeous weather has me all frisky and full of ideas and innovations. First, may I request that someone design and put in our shops a range of fully reversible skirts? On those awkward occasions when one is forced by circumstances beyond one’s control to turn up to work in yesterday’s clothes, one could simply turn the skirt inside out and—hey, presto, another outfit would be born and nobody would be any the wiser. Come on, couturiers. We have entered an age of mass production and this is an idea for the masses. Just think of the sales potential!

  To my second seasonal notion: We’re now at that delicate moment of the year when you want to start the evening with cocktails alfresco in that rarest of West End spaces, the hidden-away garden (my current favorites being a sweet, ivy-lined courtyard at the Bombardier on Drury Lane, and the newly opened terrace at the Lido Club, complete with Greek statuary)—but you then need to retreat inside around eight or nine o’clock when your arms and legs have broken out in attractive goose pimples and your teeth are chattering. Come on, publicans and nightclub owners: It’s time to put your heads together to devise some form of gas-fired or electrical outdoor heater so we can have our cocktails and drink them, too!

  Innovation three: One of you nightclub owners should have a complete revamp in the Oriental style. Anyone who has ventured out on the wild side to Limehouse (I’ll try anything once, as you know—even an intimidating stew of octopus, though that was not quite deliberate) would understand the appeal of eating Peking duck pancakes or sweet and sour pork whilst playing mah-jongg for money and watching people in kimonos try to dance a Charleston ’neath an array of gaudy Chinese lanterns. Go on, Sheridan Hamilton-Shapcott—you’re a man who likes a bit of novelty, and I promise you this would be better than snakes. Yes, readers, you did read it right. My favorite fop is bringing live pythons to his new Tutankhamun nightclub, but apparently we shouldn’t be nervous because, “They don’t bite and they can’t squeeze much if you dwug them.” Enough to give you the cold shudders? Reptiles aside, though, I have to report that the Tutankhamun is now London’s most remarkable nightclub, laden with treasures from Ancient Egypt and staffed by splendidly pretty boys and girls in black wigs, Egyptian makeup and, in some cases, loinclot
hs. Hie thee along for a Luxor Lizard cocktail, and get there quickly before the serpents arrive!

  A witty, disreputable friend whispered into my ear the other night, which struck such a chord with me that I’ve decided to adopt it as my personal motto.

  “An opportunist is a girl who can meet the wolf at the door at night and appear the next morning in a new fur coat.”

  I think I might embroider this in cross-stitch and hang it above my bed.

  Diamond Sharp

  Six

  Hedonism. That’s what it was. Sheer, dizzying, magnificent hedonism. So delicious you wanted it to last forever. So wildly out of control that you knew it couldn’t possibly do so.

  Life at Pearson’s had been just tickety-boo since Grace’s little chat with Mr. Henry. She’d finally hit on a Baker’s Lights campaign which directly addressed women. “Fancy a cake? Reach for your Baker’s. Lose those unwanted pounds with Baker’s Lights.” She’d come up with the idea without even trying, and even though her head was miles away.

  She’d be scribbling—head down—focused, the way Mr. Henry had suggested she should be, on the latest half-double for Potter’s Wonderlunch or Baker’s Lights—devising catchy phrases, thinking about what might make a striking image, congratulating herself on the sparkle of her original thoughts, the breezy efficiency with which she strung words together, the intensity with which she applied herself to this, her role—when suddenly she’d find herself on the telephone, asking to be connected to the Savoy. And she’d have absolutely no idea how it had happened, how she’d come to lay down her tools in this way without even having made a conscious decision to do so.