Free The Girl from the Paradise Ballroom by Alison Love Page A

forward, wheezing. His face had turned cheesily pale.
    “We should call the police.” Peppino shut the restaurant door, flicking the sign belatedly to “Closed.” “It is an assault upon an Englishman, they cannot dismiss it as foreigners squabbling.”
    “Forgive me,” the fair man said, “but I am feeling rather giddy.” His voice was unnaturally precise, as though he were trying to be heard above the roar of a hurricane. “Perhaps you could loosen this…”
    Antonio undid his bow tie, then the studs of his collar. They were made of gold, small and disproportionately heavy. “You would be better off at home,” he said. “Let us find you a taxi.”
    The fair man was still struggling for breath. After a moment he said: “I suffer from asthma, quite seriously sometimes. If you would not mind accompanying me—it is not far, and my wife will be at home to receive me. It would be a great kindness.”
    Peppino got the taxi, stepping into the street to hail it as if he were a constable arresting a particularly insolent felon. From the backseat Antonio watched the familiar lamp-lit streets spin past, Old Compton Street, Charing Cross Road, St. Giles Circus; then they were among the tall, dense, silent houses of Bloomsbury, set around their shadowy squares of lawn. High in the sky there was a crescent moon. Beside him the Englishman was breathing ponderously, as if he had only just learned how to do it and was afraid that if he paused, even for an instant, he might lose the knack.
    The taxi drew to a halt. Antonio helped the Englishman from the car, supporting his elbow as they climbed to his door. The curtains were drawn back in one of the upper rooms, and Antonio could see light spilling upon a wrought-iron balcony. He rang the bell once, twice, three times. At last he heard the scuffle of feet, the creaking of hinges. The next moment the front door sprang open, and he came face-to-face with the girl from the Paradise Ballroom.

Olivia Rodway had spent the evening in the upstairs drawing room of her husband’s house, trying to read
Anna Karenina
. It was on a list that Bernard had given her, of the books that any educated person ought to have read by the age of thirty. She was enjoying Anna’s story but she found Levin—the character Bernard himself most admired—earnest and insufferable.
    Rising from the silk-clad sofa she rang the servant’s bell. She had been putting this off for the past half hour. Olivia was not accustomed to asking other people to make her pots of tea, bring her trays of supper. It seemed much easier to go to the kitchen and do it herself.
    “Yes, madam?” said Avril, the housemaid. She was a gaunt young woman, all chin and elbows. Bernard had inherited her from his mother, who had trained the girl herself.
    “I am ready for supper, Avril,” Olivia said, in a lofty voice. She knew that Avril idolized Penelope, who was a proper lady—she had been a debutante, ostrich feathers and all, before the Great War—and that nothing she, Olivia, could do would win the same devotion. If she was firm, Avril would call her snooty; if she was friendly the maid would despise her as weak.
    At least I look the part, thought Olivia when Avril had gone, throwing herself onto the sofa once more. She was wearing dark yellow evening pajamas with a tobacco-colored cashmere wrap, an engagement present from Bernard, and her hair had been very expensively cut, which made the sharp lines of her face look distinguished rather than gawky. All of Bernard’s friends admired her: the poets, the journalists, even the earnest young socialists with their pipes and their corduroy trousers, who did not generally notice women. I told you, Olivia, her husband had said triumphantly: you’re an original. And it’s I who discovered you. We should both be very proud of ourselves.
    —
    Olivia had married Bernard in January, two months after their first meeting. The wedding took place in a registry office. The only guest was