France,
July 16, 1917
Dearest Flo,
I don’t know when, or even if, you’re going to get this – the mail has been taking an age to get across the Channel lately. I’ll go ahead and write it anyway, and hope for the best.
Thank you for your last. I loved the story about Gertie Farley-Stroud and her new dog. Won’t it get confusing if they call the dog Gertie, too? Maybe she shouldn’t have let her granddaughter name it. Anyway, I’d love to see them again when I next get some leave – both the lady and the dog. She’s my third favourite Englishwoman. (And look at that – I’ve been so long among you all that I’ve forgotten how to spell. There’s no ‘u’ in favorite. I’m going native.)
I know I complain, but life behind the front lines isn’t so bad, really. Obviously I can’t say much about what we see, but among the, let’s say, ‘unpleasantness’ (I wonder if that’s mild enough for the censor – you’ll have to let me know) there are always moments of joy and hope, no matter how small or fleeting. The boys can be so funny and charming, even in their darkest moments. I wonder if that’s an English thing. You seem to cope with adversity with defiant resignation. Except that you’re not English, are you? But you’re only half Welsh, surely? (I await your scathing response to that one.)
My fellow nurses are all absolute darlings. Well, most of them. I can’t name names in a letter that might be intercepted by the Bosch (they might attempt to undermine our morale by exploiting our dissatisfaction, or some such bunkum) but if she uses my hairbrush without asking one more time, she’ll learn not to mess with this ‘Yank’. I know where we keep the senna, and no one wants to spend any extra time in these latrines, let me tell you.
Have you heard from Ivor? (I still can’t bring myself to call him Skins – it really doesn’t suit him.) Or even Barty? It’s so frustrating. I only joined the Fannies to get closer to him – to keep him safe, maybe? I don’t know how I thought that would work, but it made sense when I left Maryland. I knew I could do nothing at all from three thousand miles away so I simply had to get closer. I just can’t seem to actually get to him, though. I put in a request to be moved nearer to him every time I find out where his regiment is, but by the time I get there they’ve moved on, or he’s performing in a concert party in Paris, or . . . You get the picture. I don’t think the Powers That Be in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry are going to indulge me many more times.
I was wondering if he might have written to you or Emily, thinking the letter would be more likely to reach you than me. He’s an idiot, but he’s my idiot and it’s frustrating to know I’m never more than a hundred miles from him and I still can’t see him.
But I’m getting maudlin now, and I have to stop that. No one wants a sad-eyed nurse at their bedside and I have to be on duty in a moment.
So how about something a little lighter? There was an incident nearby that made me think of you and it was sufficiently exciting that it was reported in the local newspaper (clipping enclosed). There was an old-fashioned hold-up on the road to Calais. I wanted to imagine men with bandanas over their faces, armed with Colt six-shooters, riding palominos and holding up the stagecoach, but the newspaper tells a more mundane story (the French press can be very stodgy and strait-laced sometimes). If my French is as good as I think it is, it was a man in an old coat with a muffler over his face. But he did have a six-shooter, even if it was a French army pistol, and he held up a small van on its way to the port.
But that’s not the interesting part. Well, it’s quite interesting, but it’s not what made me think of you and Emily. The newspaper reported the theft of ‘some cash’ and ‘the driver’s lunch’, but there’s a rumour going around the aid station that the courier was carrying diamonds. Can you imagine it? An actual diamond thief. Right here in France, just like one of your cases back home. I thought of you two roaring into town in your beautiful motor car and solving it all, like one of your mysteries. Wouldn’t that be fun?
But the clock has beaten me. There’s a messenger waiting in the office to take the mail and I have to go and change some dressings.
Give my love to Emily. I promise to visit on my next leave.
Your friend
Ellie
Chapter One
May 1925
Singer Mickey Kent announced the Charleston, and the gentlemen of the Aristippus Club and their lady guests whooped their approval. As the band struck up the familiar tune, a startlingly beautiful young thing, her face aglow and her headdress askew, loudly proclaimed the dance to be ‘the capybara’s spats’, earning her a cheer of her own.
Skins Maloney looked out from behind his drum set at the wildly flailing dancers and smiled. He caught the eye of his old friend Barty Dunn and nodded towards a particularly uncoordinated gentleman dancing near the front of the low stage. He was half a beat behind the band, and his swivelling feet seemed in constant danger of tripping him up, but such was the look of unselfconscious pleasure on his doughy face that it was impossible to do anything but share his glee.
Dunn grinned round the neck of his double bass and inclined his head towards another candidate. This one had no chin, and a neck so thin that his shirt collar appeared to be floating freely in mid-air, but he, too, was lost in the joy of the dance. His delight was equally infectious.
His dance partner was less impressed. Twice now she had been jabbed in the ribs by an errant elbow, and she was trying to put some empty air between them to save herself from further injury.
It had been, as always, quite a night. The Dizzy Heights had been the club’s resident band for some months, and it was the club, not the band, who thought themselves the lucky ones. Aspiring bands fought eagerly for even the sniff of a chance of a ‘residency’, no matter where, but the Dizzy Heights had long since passed ‘aspiring’ and were well on the way to ‘highly respected’. Their reputation among jazz aficionados in London was such that clubs were chasing them rather than the other way round.
They had regular spots at a couple of the more fashionable jazz clubs on weeknights and kept Saturdays open for ‘special’ bookings (of which there was never a shortage). But Friday nights were spent at the Aristippus Club, a gentleman’s club in Mayfair that was experimenting with providing regular entertainment for its younger members. The older members had a more traditional view of what a gentlemen’s club should be and still tutted impatiently if anyone so much as breathed too loudly in the reading room, but there was a new generation coming through and they wanted some fun. A delegation had approached the band and a deal had been struck, not least because Skins was so amused by the club’s nickname: ‘Tipsy Harry’s’.
It was always a lively crowd, who made up for in enthusiasm what they lacked in dancing talent and musical knowledge, and the band always had a splendid time. This evening’s crowd – many of whom were there to celebrate the birthday of one of the members – had been among the most enthusiastic they had played for, and this, the third Charleston of the night, was the raucous climax to an already-exuberant affair.
There were cheers and applause as the band brought the song to a close.
‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Mickey through his tin speaking trumpet. ‘You’ve been a wonderful audience and we’ve been the Dizzy Heights. Enjoy the rest of your evening. Goodnight.’