‘No.’ Dolly scanned the announcement, ‘it would appear not. They’re having guests to an invitation-only party at the 400 Club.’
As Lady Gwendolyn launched a rowdy tirade against the low tone of such places—‘Nightclubs!’—Dolly drifted. She’d only been to the 400 once, with Kitty and some of her soldier friends. Deep down in the cellars next door to where the Alhambra Theatre used to stand in Leicester Square, dark and intimate and deepest red as far as the eye could see: the silk on the walls, the plush banquettes with their single flickering candles, the velvet curtains that spilled like wine to meet the scarlet carpets.
There’d been music and laughter and servicemen every-where, and couples swaying dreamily on the small shadowy dance floor. And when a soldier with too much whisky under his belt and a rather uncomfortable swelling in his trousers, leaned against her and whispered wetly of all the things he’d like to do when he got her alone, Dolly had spied over his shoulder a stream of bright young things—better- dressed, more beautiful, just more, than the rest of the club-goers— slipping behind a red cord and being greeted by a small man with a long black moustache. (‘Luigi Rossi,’ Kitty had said with an authoritative nod, when they were drinking a nightcap of gin and lemon under the kitchen table back at Campden Grove. ‘Didn’t you know? He runs the whole shebang.’)
‘I’ve had enough of that now,’ said Lady Gwendolyn, squishing the butt of her cigarette into the open tub of corn ointment on the table beside her. ‘I’m tired and I’m not feeling well—I need one of my sweets. Oh, but I fear I’m not long for this world. I barely slept a wink last night, what with the noise, the terrible noise.’
‘Poor Lady Gwendolyn,’ said Dolly, putting The Lady aside and digging out the grande dame’s bag of boiled sweets. ‘We have that nasty Mr Hitler to thank for that, his bombers really are—’
‘I don’t mean the bombers, silly girl. I’m talking about them. The others, with their infernal—’ she shuddered theatrically and the timbre of her voice lowered—‘giggling.’
‘Oh,’ said Dolly. ‘Them.’
‘A ghastly lot of girls,’ declared Lady Gwendolyn, who was yet to meet any of them. ‘Office girls, at that, typing for the ministries— they’re bound to be fast. What on earth was the War Office thinking? I realise of course that they must be accommodated, but here? In my beautiful house? Peregrine is beside himself—the letters I’ve had! Can’t bear to think of such creatures living amongst the heirlooms.’ Her nephew’s displeasure threatened to bring a smile, but the profound bitterness at Lady Gwendolyn’s core quickly smothered it. She reached to grip Dolly’s wrist. ‘They’re not entertaining men in my home, are they, Dorothy?’
‘Oh no, Lady Gwendolyn. They know your feelings on the matter, I made sure of that.’
‘Because I won’t have it. I won’t have fornication under my roof.’ Dolly nodded soberly. This, she knew, was the Great Matter at the heart of her mistress’s asperity. Dr Rufus had explained all about Lady Gwendolyn’s sister, Penelope. They’d been in-separable when they were young, he said, similar enough in looks and manner that most people took them for twins, even though there were eighteen months between them. They’d gone to dances, country house weekends, always the two of them together—but then Penelope committed the crime for which her sister would never forgive her. ‘She fell in love and got married,’ Dr Rufus had said, drawing on his cigar with the story-teller’s satisfaction at having reached his punch line: ‘And, in the process, broke her sister’s heart.’
‘There, there,’ said Dolly soothingly. ‘It won’t come to that, Lady Gwendolyn. Before you know it the war will be over and they’ll all go back to wherever it is they came from.’ Dolly had no idea if that was true—for her part, she hoped it wasn’t: the big house was very quiet at night, and Kitty and the others were a bit of fun—but it was the only thing to say, especially when the old lady was so worked up. Poor thing, it must be terrible to lose one’s soulmate. Dolly couldn’t imagine life without hers.
Lady Gwendolyn fell back against her pillow. The diatribe against nightclubs and their ills, her rich imaginings of the Babylonian behaviour within, memories of her sister and the threat of fornication beneath her roof—all had taken their toll. She was weary and drawn,