Last Dance with Valentino. Daisy Waugh

I explained how I’d come down from my room because I had wanted to watch the dancing . . . and I might easily have finished it there, except I didn’t. I told him everything about how mad I was for the new type of dancing – and about how I’d read a little of Miss Sawyer while I was still in England, and about how I had always longed to see a real tango, danced by the professionals, and about how I thought he and Miss Sawyer were the most fabulous, most magical dancers I had ever set eyes on. ‘I was going to watch you from the garden,’ I said to him, ‘but then I realised the windows were open and I could get a better view from the porch, and – I’m so sorry, truly – very sorry, Mr Guglielmi. I didn’t hear a word you and Mrs de Saulles were saying. Not a word.’

      He smiled. ‘Your hearing is damaged?’

      ‘By which I mean, that is, not a word that made the slightest bit of sense to me . . . In any case, it has nothing to do with me. I am sorry, but there was nothing I could do. First you came out and then she came out. And then he came out ... And I was utterly trapped . . . ’

      He asked me my name after that and I told him. Jennifer. Jennifer Doyle from London. ‘My father is the portrait painter in there. The one who can’t remove his eyes from Mrs de Saulles.’

      ‘No one ever can,’ he said grimly.

      I wasn’t sure what to make of that. ‘It drives her quite mad if we aren’t all head over heels in love with her,’ he said.

      ‘Well,’ I replied carefully, ‘then I suppose my father is keeping her happy.’

      He glanced at me. ‘It’s hard for her. To be here. So far from family . . . ’

      ‘I’m sure it is.’

      ‘But tell me – never mind that – tell me something more about yourself. What are you doing, here at this house?’

      ‘Well – I am – his daughter. And he is an excellent painter. And I’m here to teach the boy to speak good English, I think. Though I don’t quite understand that because his mother seems to speak perfectly good English herself.’

      ‘Of course, because she was educated in England.’

      ‘She was? . . . Well. Well, then, I’m not certain. I’m also meant to keep company with Mrs de Saulles, apparently. Due to her being so far away from home, my father said. But she doesn’t much seem to want that and – apart from just now – I’ve not really even met her yet . . . I asked Mr Hademak several times this afternoon what my job here was meant to be – and all he can say is, I’m supposed to make them “giggle”, which isn’t something I’ve ever been particularly good at. But. Anyway, I have no idea what I’m doing here really, Mr Guglielmi. I wish I did . . . I’m a not-quite-guest,’ I added, ‘a bit like you’ – and immediately regretted it. ‘Only even more so, because they don’t seem to want me to do anything . . . Except stay out of sight.’

      He laughed aloud at that. A wonderful laugh, it was – it still is: heartfelt, so warm, and so magically infectious. I heard myself laughing with him . . . And then, from the drawing room, the music reached us . . . just a silly ditty, it was. So silly.

      You made me love you . . . I didn’t want to do it . . . You made me want you . . . And all the time you knew it . . . I guess you always knew it . . . I guess you always knew it . . .

      I think I fell silent. He said, ‘You look worried.’ But I wasn’t worried! I was listening to the music, and the night creatures, and feeling the warm air on my skin. I could feel nothing but the music, the warm air – and his voice – and I longed for him to ask me to dance, and in my head the longing obscured everything. I was frightened he might ask me to dance and yet even more frightened that he would not, and that this moment would end without his arms around me, and he said, ‘It’s beautiful music, isn’t it?’

      And it was!

       You made me love you . . . I didn’t want to do it . . . You made me want you . . . And all the time you knew it . . .

      ‘Do you like to dance, Jenny?’

      I told him I loved to dance. And whatever else it may have been, it was bold of me, I think, to dare to dance with him, after I had seen him dance with Miss Sawyer.

      For once, I resisted the urge to babble. I was silent. Without any more words, he turned to me – and we danced. There on the veranda, by the light of the moon . . . I swear I never danced so well. I think, in his arms, it would have been impossible to dance badly – as if his grace were like his laughter: irresistibly, magically infectious . . . the most generous dancer, the most generous lover; the most generous man in the world.

      . . . . Did I write that I hadn’t fallen in love with him that night? Did I write that?

      How absurd!

      And now I simply have to sleep.

      Chapter 3

      Hotel Continental New York

      Saturday, 14 August 1926

      Not so sure what to do with myself. Don’t want to sit, in case the dress creases. But it’s only seven o’clock. I have two hours to kill and – oh, hell, maybe I should change back into my chemise, just for a short while. But then I shall want to shower again, in this heat, and it was a long enough wait to get a turn in there the first time, and then suppose they ran out of water? Besides, it so happens I look just about as good at this particular instant as I have in my entire life.

      The party’s too far to walk. Maybe I’ll take a taxicab, which means leaving at – what time? I mustn’t arrive before Rudy. They may not even let me in! But if I arrive too long after he does he may think I’m not coming at all.

      I’m so goddamn nervous. I could have dined with him at the Colony tonight, and gone on with him to see the show. Why didn’t I? He said he’d come by and pick me up, and I know he wanted to.

      He said, I can’t contemplate a whole evening without you . . . Only I couldn’t contemplate an evening of sharing him, I suppose; of dining with him and all the others whom I know he is obliged to be dining with tonight. I couldn’t have done it – as his date? I think not! As his newly engaged scenario writer? Perhaps . . . Except then I would have to sit there in my off-the-peg beautiful, beautiful dress, and my off-thepeg beautiful satin slippers, and smile sweetly, which isn’t my style, and they would all bawl at one another across the table about this and that, and whether Rudy and Pola intend to be here or there . . . I couldn’t quite have done it. I would have half shrunk into the floorboards, and that’s no way to keep a man’s interest, when he’s recently been voted the most desirable movie star in history . . .

      The party tonight is in his honour, as parties he attends are prone to be, these days. I should have preferred not to go to that either, and to wait to see him tomorrow, when we can be alone again, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He said he would send his driver to fetch me. I said I didn’t know where I would be, and he said he would order his driver to search every corner of the city until he found me.

      So I’ve said to the nice fat guy – the room clerk – at the front desk that when a driver and a big car arrives for me he is to send them right away again. The fat guy was dreadfully curious, needless to say, but I wouldn’t give him any more details.

      I shall make my own way. When I’m good and calm and ready. That’s what I’ll do. Call a taxicab. Or something . . . Oh, God . . .

      A cigarette!

      And a cold shower.

      The trouble with this new-fangled, fancy-pants typewriter, which I adore more than anything I ever had, except the dress – no, including the dress – the trouble with this beautiful machine is you can get the words out so fast that you wind up scribbling down any amount of hogwash. So. A little self-control