Last Dance with Valentino - Daisy Waugh

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said, her voice low and expressionless. ‘I shouldn’t think so. I wasn’t aware that you were here, Mr Guglielmi.’

      ‘No?’ He sounded unconvinced. ‘But you sent for me only this morning. I have been here since noon!’

      ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so,’ she said again. ‘In any case my head aches dreadfully, so you might as well go home.’ She turned away from him to her small boy, who hadn’t yet looked up from his book. ‘Jack – darling,’ she snapped at him, and he jumped. ‘My baby, come here and say hello to your mama. I’ve been looking all over for you.’

      She wandered away soon afterwards, ignoring me, just as she always did, with the boy following dutifully behind her.

      Rudy sighed. He reached across, held my cheek in his hand, and looked at me with a sort of wistfulness I didn’t fully comprehend. We were alone, side by side on the carpet, our elbows resting on the floor. He kissed me.

      ‘Only promise me,’ he said, pulling away, ‘promise you’ll keep in touch?’

      But the kiss was still working its magic. My mind wasn’t there. I laughed at him. ‘Keep in touch?’ I repeated. ‘Rudy, I’m not going anywhere. What can you mean?’

      It was then he took the pin from his collar, a small gold pin. He gave it to me. ‘Look after it, will you?’ he said. ‘I brought it all the way from Italy.’ I have it still, of course. I have looked after it ever since.

      Retaliation came curving back before we’d even plucked ourselves up from the floor. Mrs de Saulles sent a message to the nursery barely half a minute later, via Madeleine, who arrived looking as if she’d been through a hurricane. She tapped on the door, saw us seated there, closer than we might have been, his hand on my bare arm, but she didn’t even snigger. Rudy was to go to the hall and wait there, alone, she told us, until Hademak returned from his errands. As soon as he returned, he would be leaving at once to drive them both – Mrs de Saulles and Rudy – to the train station.

      I never saw Rudy at The Box again.

      Later that afternoon, after she had reached New York, Mrs de Saulles sent a message via Hademak, ordering my father to pack up his belongings. She said she wanted him out of the house by nightfall.

      Poor Papa. Poor, stupid man. We overheard him – the entire household overheard him – bawling at Hademak, the pair of them as lovestruck and as broken as each other. And yet he bawled as if his exile were all Mr Hademak’s fault.

      ‘You think I don’t know your game?’ Papa was roaring, and upstairs, alone in my bedroom, I’m sorry to say I winced for him. ‘You think I don’t see you wheedling away, gazing at your mistress like a Goddamn puppy dog? You think she and I don’t laugh at you? We laugh every time you have left the room! And now, the moment her back is turned, you try to oust me – but you can’t win! You can’t win, you filthy Swedish wheedler . . . ’ Why, he suddenly declared, only that morning he and Mrs de Saulles had been contemplating running away together to Chile. Or Uruguay. Or London . . . ‘You can’t stamp on a love like ours with your filthy Swedish wheedling. Eh? Ha! Get out of here! Get out of my sight before I have you fired. Get out!’

      Hademak came knocking at my door. He stood there, his head stooped to fit beneath the frame, a great giant of a man, and he was shaking like a leaf. ‘Your father doesn’t listen,’ he said to me. ‘He thinks I am guilty with some terrible plan. But he has to leave immediately. At once. This afternoon . . . Mrs de Saulles won’t tolerate to have him in the house.’

      ‘But why? Why him? Why not me? What has he done?’

      ‘She has complained to Mr de Saulles that – he has performed inappropriate and, er, unwelcome approaches towards her, and, er . . . ’ he couldn’t bring himself to look at me ‘ . . . Mr de Saulles iss . . . enthusiastic to telephone the sheriff.’

      ‘What?’

      He shrugged – a tiny little shrug, for such enormous shoulders. ‘Madame is . . . most unhappy. Your father has to leave us at once, or I have been ordered to telephone Sheriff Withers.’

      ‘But to leave for where? Where is he to go?’

      ‘I am to give him two hundred dollars for his art and then I must drive him to the train station . . . Your papa iss insisted on taking his art with him. But I have been told to order him . . . that the money is only when he leaves the art behind.’ Mr Hademak’s English seemed to deteriorate, the more distressed he became. ‘He must leave it all behind, and go out at once. Can you explain to him? . . . I am ssorry, Jennifer . . . I can direct him with an excellent boarding-house in the city . . . It is cheap . . . ’

      There was little choice. Father could leave for the city with two hundred dollars or he could be arrested and leave without a cent for Mineola jail. Either way, we all knew there was no possibility of Mrs de Saulles relenting. He had to go at once.

      Sadly, I agreed I would go to talk to him. I told Mr Hademak that I would pack up my own things first, to give my father a few moments to collect himself.

      ‘Absolutely not!’ Mr Hademak cried. ‘Under no account. You are under the orders to stay here with the Little Man. In fact, in the telephone call to me, Mrs de Saulles made it quite clearly – the money I will give to your father is only depending on three things: first one, he leaves in this moment; second one, that he leaves all his workings and sketches behind; and third one, that you remain here at The Box, with the Little Man. You understand, Mrs de Saulles,’ he added shyly, ‘is well aware of his very strong fondness for you. She is determined about hating to break that little heart of his.’

      ‘It has nothing to do with it!’ I retorted – for I was never in any doubt. ‘She wants me here to keep me apart from Rudy!’

      ‘Not at all.’ He didn’t look at me. ‘Not at all.’

      ‘But I can’t stay, Mr Hademak! Not without Papa!’

      ‘You must.’

      ‘Perhaps I could look after the boy in New York, when he’s with his father. I should love to do that. Couldn’t I do that?’

      ‘Not,’ said Mr Hademak, shaking his head. I knew it in any case.

      ‘But I could at least meet him there. Often.’

      ‘Not,’ said Mr Hademak again. ‘It is forbidden. The moment you are leaving here you not be seeing the Little Man again.’

      ‘But, Mr Hademak – my father! He can’t survive on his own. Not in New York! What will he do?’

      ‘Without money, you shall neither one nor two of you manage in surviving here or in New York or anywhere in this big country . . . I am sso ssorry, Jennifer. But there it is the story ... He must leave, and you must sstay, and that is for your best survival, father and daughter both.’

      And so it was. An hour later, Hademak drove Papa through the cold winter rain to the train station. I came along too, but only to wave him goodbye. Papa didn’t speak the entire journey. He sat silently, submissively, crestfallen and quite bewildered, his hands shaking – an old man and a disgraced schoolboy at once. He looked terrified.

      ‘You’ll be all right,’ I said to him as we waited on the station platform together. (Mr Hademak had tactfully stayed in the car.) ‘Mr Guglielmi will help you, I’m certain of it. Mr Hademak has given you his address, hasn’t he? And you know where it is? Don’t forget – you have it in your wallet. Promise me you will contact him as soon as you arrive. Promise me!’

      Papa promised, but I didn’t believe him. He climbed onto the train.

      ‘And you have the address of the boarding-house?’ I called after him. ‘And Mr Hademak says you can walk to it from the station. From Pennsylvania

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