‘Hungary,’ he said. ‘Austria-Hungary. When it was an empire.’
Ada had only ever heard of two empires, the British one that oppressed the natives and the Roman one that killed Christ. It was news to her that there were more.
‘I don’t tell many people this,’ he said, leaning towards her. ‘In my own country, I am a count.’
‘Oh my goodness.’ Ada couldn’t help it. A count. ‘Are you really? With a castle, and all?’ She heard how common she sounded. Maybe he wouldn’t notice, being a foreigner.
‘No.’ He smiled. ‘Not every count lives in a castle. Some of us live in more modest circumstances.’
His suit, Ada could tell, was expensive. Wool. Super 200, she wouldn’t be surprised. Grey. Well tailored. Discreet.
‘What language were you talking, earlier, in the street?’
‘My mother tongue,’ he said. ‘German.’
‘German?’ Ada swallowed. Not all Germans are bad, she could hear her father say. Rosa Luxemburg. A martyr. And those who’re standing up to Hitler. Still, Dad wouldn’t like a German speaker in the house. Stop it, Ada. She was getting ahead of herself.
‘And you?’ he said. ‘What were you doing in Dover Street?’
Ada wondered for a moment whether she could say she was visiting her dressmaker, but then thought better of it.
‘I work there,’ she said.
‘How very independent,’ he said. ‘And what do you work at?’
She didn’t like to say she was a tailoress, even if it was bespoke, ladies. Couldn’t claim to be a modiste, like Madame Duchamps, not yet. She said the next best thing.
‘I’m a mannequin, actually.’ Wanted to add, an artiste.
He leant back in the chair. She was aware of how his eyes roamed over her body as if she was a landscape to be admired, or lost in.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course.’ He pulled out a gold cigarette case from his inside pocket, opened it, and leant forward to Ada. ‘Would you like a cigarette?’
She didn’t smoke. She wasn’t sophisticated like that. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to take one and end up choking. That would be too humiliating. Tea at the Ritz was full of pitfalls, full of reminders of how far she had to go.
‘Not just now, thank you,’ she said.
He tapped the cigarette on the case before he lit it. She heard him inhale and watched as the smoke furled from his nostrils. She would like to be able to do that.
‘And where are you a mannequin?’
Ada was back on safer ground. ‘At Madame Duchamps.’
‘Madame Duchamps. Of course.’
‘You know her?’
‘My great-aunt used to be a customer of hers. She died last year. Perhaps you knew her?’
‘I haven’t been there very long,’ she said. ‘What was her name?’
Stanislaus laughed and Ada noticed he had a glint of gold in his mouth. ‘I couldn’t tell you,’ he said. ‘She was married so many times, I couldn’t keep up.’
‘Perhaps that’s what killed her,’ she said. ‘All that marrying.’
It would, if her parents were anything to go by. She knew what they would think of Stanislaus and his great-aunt. Morals of a hyena. That was Germany for you. But Ada was intrigued by the idea. A woman, a loose woman. She could smell her perfumed body, see her languid gestures as her body shimmied close and purred for affection.
‘You’re funny,’ Stanislaus said. ‘I like that.’
It had stopped raining by the time they left, but it was dark.
‘I should escort you home,’ he said.
‘There’s no need, really.’
‘It’s the least a gentleman can do.’
‘Another time,’ she said, realizing how forward that sounded. ‘I didn’t mean that. I mean, I have to go somewhere else. I’m not going straight home.’
She hoped he wouldn’t follow her.
‘Another time it is,’ he said. ‘Do you like cocktails, Ada Vaughan? Because the Café Royal is just round the corner and is my favourite place.’
Cocktails. Ada swallowed. She was out of her depth. But she’d learn to swim, she’d pick it up fast.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘and thank you for tea.’
‘I know where you work,’ he said. ‘I will drop you a line.’
He clicked his heels, lifted his hat and turned. She watched as he walked back down Piccadilly. She’d tell her parents she was working late.
*
Martinis, Pink Ladies, Mint Juleps. Ada grew to be at ease in the Café Royal, and the Savoy, Smith’s and the Ritz. She bought rayon in the market at trade price and made herself some dresses after work at Mrs B.’s. Cut on the bias, the cheap synthetic fabrics emerged like butterflies from a chrysalis and hugged Ada into evening elegance. Long gloves and a cocktail hat. Ada graced the chicest establishments with confidence.
‘Swept you off your feet, he has,’ Mrs B. would say each Friday as Ada left work to meet Stanislaus. Mrs B. didn’t like gentlemen calling at her shop in case it gave her a bad name, but she saw that Stanislaus dressed well and had class, even if it was foreign class. ‘So be careful.’
Ada twisted rings from silver paper and paraded her left hand in front of the mirror when no one was looking. She saw herself as Stanislaus’s wife, Ada von Lieben. Count and Countess von Lieben. ‘I hope his intentions are honourable,’ Mrs B.’d said. ‘Because I’ve never known a gentleman smitten so fast.’
Ada just laughed.
*
‘Who is he then?’ her mother said. ‘If he was a decent fellow, he’d want to meet your father and me.’
‘I’m late, Mum,’ Ada said. Her mother blocked the hallway, stood in the middle of the passage. She wore Dad’s old socks rolled down to her ankles, and her shabby apron was stained in front.
‘Bad enough you come home in no fit state on a Friday night, but now you’ve taken up going out in the middle of the week, whatever next?’
‘Why shouldn’t I go out of an evening?’
‘You’ll get a name,’ her mother said. ‘That’s why. He’d better not try anything on. No man wants second-hand goods.’
Her mouth set in a scornful line. She nodded as if she knew the world and all its sinful ways.
You know nothing, Ada thought.
‘For goodness sake,’ Ada said. ‘He’s not like that.’
‘Then why don’t you bring him home? Let your father and I be the judge of that.’
He’d never have set foot inside a two-up two-down terrace that rattled when the trains went by, with a scullery tagged on the back and an outside privy. He wouldn’t understand that she had to sleep in the same bed with her sisters, while her brothers lay on mattresses on the floor, the other side of the dividing curtain Dad had rigged up. He wouldn’t know what to do with all those kids running about. Her mother kept the house clean enough but sooty grouts clung to the nets and coated the furniture and sometimes in the summer the bugs were so bad they had to sit outside in the street.
Ada couldn’t picture him here, not ever.
‘I