Free Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge

white throat and watched the bodice of her gown as it rose and fell. Though I was happy to be in Scurra’s company I was beginning to wonder if I would ever eat again, and tortured myself with an image of a breast of duck dolloped with sweet apple.
    ‘Rosenfelder,’ I whispered. ‘We have an engagement for dinner tonight with Lady Duff Gordon.’
    ‘Me? I have not heard of such a woman.’
    ‘She’s travelling under an assumed name,’ said Scurra. ‘She’s a couturier. It could be useful for you to know her.’
    Rosenfelder looked impressed, but not unduly so. His attention lay entirely with the woman.
    It seemed an age before she opened her eyes; when she did so she appeared neither startled nor embarrassed. ‘A little brandy, perhaps?’ suggested Scurra, and Rosenfelder bounded to his feet and opening a three-cornered cabinet fetched decanter and glasses. Pouring a generous measure he handed it to her. I could have done with a drink myself, if only to quieten the rumblings of my empty stomach, but he thought only of her. She sipped, gave a little cough, swung her feet gracefully to the floor and sat bolt upright. She was still beautiful in spite of her red-rimmed eyes and even more so when she took off her hat, for her hair was amber rather than gold, though that may have been the reflection of the fire.
    She took things very calmly for one who had caused so much trouble. She didn’t apologise though she expressed gratitude for the concern we had shown. Her voice was cultured, resonant. For all her threadbare shoes she was very much the lady.
    ‘Doubtless you know my story,’ she said. ‘It’s not uncommon and of little interest, except to myself.’ Even so, she proceeded to tell it in some detail. Her name was Adele Baines and she had been born of a French mother and English father under the Opera House in Paris. She had sung in the courtyard when hanging out the washing. At the age of twelve no less a personage than Madame Adiny had offered to train her voice. At nineteen she had come to London, and, unable to find work as a chanteuse, sought employment as a model at Fenwick’s in Bond Street.
    ‘God is telling me something,’ exclaimed Rosenfelder.
    After three years she had caught the eye of a director of the firm – he was married, naturally – and they had become lovers. She had accepted the nice meals in expensive restaurants and there had been three or four weekends at an hotel in Dieppe, but when he had wanted to set her up in an apartment in Manchester Square she had refused. She preferred her own room above a butcher’s shop in Somers Town. It gave her independence. Then something happened, something that changed everything – Here she broke off and staring down at her left hand gave a little mew of annoyance.
    ‘My nail,’ she said, ‘I’ve broken my nail.’
    ‘The something,’ Rosenfelder demanded. ‘What is this something?’
    Frowning, she continued.
    The man’s small son had fallen sick and almost died. She had made no demands and was always there when he needed her. For many nights she waited, with his permission, outside the hospital to comfort him when he stumbled out, the tears still wet on his cheeks. When the child was better they discovered that what had begun as merely an affair of passion had turned into true love. Two months ago he had arranged to take her to New York and introduce her to a man who had business connections with the Metropolitan Opera House. He had bought her a ticket, steerage passage so as to avoid scandal, and was to have joined her at Southampton. ‘The rest you know,’ she said. ‘And have taken part in.’
    It seemed to me that her speech had been well rehearsed. Truth to tell, my sympathies were with her vanished lover. When a woman declares she has made no demands one can be sure she believes she’s owed something. I wanted to ask what on earth she’d been doing roaming about on the upper decks, but held my tongue. It might have sounded