One Enchanted Evening by Anton du Beke

Author:Anton du Beke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction

Chapter Twenty-one

ON THE UPPER DECK OF the number 6 omnibus Hélène Marchmont pulled her burgundy cloche down low. Few of the office clerks and day-trippers around her would ever have set foot inside the Buckingham Hotel, but there had been a time when Hélène’s face had gazed out from the billboards at Piccadilly Circus, or graced the covers of the magazines in the roadside stands, and Hélène was not in the mood to be recognised.

By the time she stepped off the bus, she felt freer. Brixton Road was a rush of office clerks and railway workers coming home for the night. The crowds outside Marks and Spencer on the corner of Atlantic Road were deepening and, further up the high street, shoppers streamed out of Morley’s department store. The lights in the music hall gazing down the hill were just flickering to life, drawing people to them like moths to a flame.

It began to rain as Hélène marched into the still bustling markets of Electric Avenue. Half an hour later, she emerged back onto the high street, where one of the last remaining horse carriages was disgorging its passengers, with a bunch of daisies in one hand and a small rag doll in the other.

It was getting dark. She was late.

The houses along Brixton Hill had once been grand residences, the perfect imitation of the bigger townhouses that Hélène looked out on from her Buckingham quarters each day. But it had been a generation and more since the railways came and the once desirable residences had been partitioned, partitioned again, leased and sold off to whoever could afford them. Now some of the facades looked ancient, and black with smoke.

Sudbourne Road was one of the lesser terraces, but even here the buildings had been carved up and carved up again. Hélène stood outside one and felt a rush of warmth. The lights were on in the basement flat. Through the walls, she could hear the sound of somebody playing a trumpet – not as expertly, perhaps, as Louis Kildare and the rest of the Archie Adams Band, but with a certain kind of amateur flair that, nevertheless, made her heart soar.

If only Maynard Charles could see me now, Hélène thought, with a wry smile. If only he knew what I was really doing in that year I was away from the Buckingham Hotel! He’d have one of his fits . . .

She gently knocked on the door.

The lady who answered was diminutive in stature. She was wrapped in a cream shawl, and underneath that a simple house dress and apron. The slippers on her feet were evidently her husband’s, for they were far too big. Upon seeing Hélène, her face broke into an irrepressible grin and she opened up her arms to take her in. Hélène bent down, so that the elder lady could press her wrinkled black cheek against Hélène’s own.

‘Noelle,’ Hélène whispered.

‘We’ve missed you, girl.’

‘I know. I know, Auntie.’

Then Hélène was through the doors, the sound of the trumpet playing stopped, and on Sudbourne Road a miniature celebration began.

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