THE MAUD ALLAN AFFAIR

by

Russell James

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Most of the characters and significant events in this book are real.  The account of the famous Pemberton Billing/Maud Allan libel trial of 1918 is taken from contemporary records.

Maud Allan (1873 to 1956) was as famous in 1908 as she appears here.  Born Beulah Maud Durrant in Toronto, she was brought up in San Francisco and moved to Europe in her late teens, both to further her musical education and to get away from her domineering mother.  Her erotic dance performance, The Vision of Salome, was notorious, and images of her could be bought in forms ranging from cheap postcards to porcelain figurines.  Her popularity was such that her appearance at the 1908 London Olympic Games helped save it from failure but she is best known for her part in the ‘trial of the century’ which, in its day, ran beside the First World War on the front pages of the newspapers.

Colonel Charles à Court Repington (1858 to 1925) had a distinguished military career, during which he ran a wing of the British Secret Service.  When his affair with a married woman was exposed by Henry Wilson, Repington reluctantly resigned his commission and became a military correspondent, principally for The Times, though he remained close to senior level military leaders and to both wartime Prime Ministers.  His role in the Maud Allan court case has long been a matter of speculation, and it is significant that in his copious and notorious diaries he, uncharacteristically, avoided mention of Maud and her sensational trial.  All his friends and contacts mentioned in this book are real people.

Noel Pemberton Billing (1881 to 1946) fought in the Boer War and returned to England to become an inventor.  Having an early passion for aircraft, he founded Supermarine in 1912 and the company went on to develop the Spitfire fighter plane in the 1930s.  Billing fought in the First World War and became an independent MP for East Herts, a seat he held from 1916 to 1921.  Practically all his scenes in this book are genuine.  His wartime confederates, Spencer, Beamish, White etc., are all real people.

Eileen Villiers-Stuart, nee Graves (1892 to ?) remains a woman of mystery.  Her role in the scandal is a matter of record but why she behaved as she did remains unexplained.  She was clearly spirited and resourceful; she rose from humble beginnings to become a cabinet minister’s mistress; and she disappeared from public record at the same time she disappears from this book.

Margot Asquith (1865 to 1945) nee Tennant, Countess of Oxford,  had a wild and wealthy upbringing.  As a young woman she was a leading member of the ‘Souls’, a band of rich young people whose bohemian and sybaritic behaviour shocked their elders.  Yet she suddenly settled down, marrying the up and coming Henry Herbert Asquith, becoming, in 1908, wife of the Prime Minister.  She was renowned but not always admired for her waspish wit.  Though the subject of rumour and gossip at the time, her relationship with Maud Allan remains uncertain; but they did remain close friends and Margot did allow Maud to live in the grand West Wing, presumably rent-free, for many years.

Henry Herbert Asquith (1852 to 1928) was Liberal MP for East Fife from 1886 to 1918.  He led the Liberal Party and was Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916.  Seen at the time as an insufficiently aggressive war leader, he was replaced by Lloyd George in 1916.

David Lloyd George (1863 to 1945) stood out as a young man, became a fiery MP, and rapidly rose through Liberal Party ranks.  He was MP for Caernarfon Boroughs from 1890 until his death.  He achieved national fame with what was thought of as ‘his’ budget, the ‘People’s Budget’ of 1909, although the detail had been worked out and agreed before he became Chancellor.  He replaced Asquith as Prime Minister in 1916.  Popular as he was with the electorate, Lloyd George had a reputation for cunning and adultery, none of which lowered his standing with the public.  Frances Stevenson was his long-term mistress, and the couple married after the death of Lloyd George’s wife.

Neil Primrose (1882 to 1917), youngest son of the 5th Earl of Roseberry, began his political career as MP for Wisbech.  He became Chief Whip in Asquith’s government in 1912, the year he met Eileen.  He was killed in action in Palestine.

Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) (1870 to 1945) and Robert Ross (1869 to 1918) were close friends of Oscar Wilde and, in different ways, stood by him during and after his disgrace.  Douglas and Ross fell out after Wilde’s death, and the portrait of Ross given here is from Bosie’s point of view.

Wilfred Owen (1893 to 1918) is considered by many to be Britain’s leading war poet, a reputation based on his only book of poems, put together after his death by Siegfried Sassoon and published posthumously.  The exact details of his death are unclear but are broadly as given here.

The Cherniavsky Trio accompanied Maud Allan on her dance tour.

The Café Royal, the Cave of the Golden Calf, the Cave of Harmony and Murray’s Nightclub are all genuine.

The lights dim ...

What am I doing here?  Do I deserve to be torn apart, piece by screaming piece, exposed and humiliated before the harsh gaze of the public?  What have I done wrong?

I know what you’ll say: I brought it upon myself; I chose to put myself here.

But what choice did I have?  Should I have sat back and let myself be branded a lesbian witch and incubus?  I led a cult, he said.  I was – what did that doctor say? – a sadist, a moral pervert and a grave danger to public morality.  A lunatic, he claimed.  The priest said I must be a perverted creature.  All this, mind you, after they’d put an undoubted maniac in the box to ramble through his fantasies for two whole days, dragging in the Prime Minister, the Admiralty, the Secret Service.  Then there was that woman…  They listened to her.  Believed her.  Though she is evil.  Dangerous.  Yet I’m the one on trial.

Worse, far worse than that, came right at the beginning, when that unspeakable man exposed our dreadful secret.  How did he discover it?  He destroyed me  in front of everybody, with the press and public gallery hanging on every vicious word.  It was unfair.  Despicable.  And he called me shameless!  From that terrible moment I was the one on trial.   But must I – must we – continue to bear the guilt, after twenty silent years?

FANFARE

‘She dances like a revivalist preacher

and makes as many converts.’

Christopher St John

(alias Christina Marshall)

writing of Maud Allan

in Lord Alfred Douglas’s magazine,

The Academy, 1908

She chose her moment, Repington thought.  The sound of the slap rang like a gunshot through the quiet air of the sedate garden party.  A woman’s hand on a man’s cheek.  The Colonel glanced immediately to the small group beside the lake where the guest of honour, carrying a parasol and fan and wearing a flowing dress and wide-brimmed hat, stood between three well-dressed men.  She said something Repington didn’t catch, something about lilies beside a pond, something aimed perhaps at the best-dressed, slightly weak-looking man, Lord Alfred Douglas – weak-looking to Colonel Repington, who knew him as the infamous boyfriend of Oscar Wilde, that beautiful young man whose father had forced the court case which brought Wilde down.  That had been back in 1895, and the beautiful boy was now in his thirties.  He glared at the woman, his hand twitched, and Repington knew that if Maud had been a man Douglas would have struck him. 

Maud Allan turned, and with head held high she strode away across the lawn, cutting through the guests like a galleon through water.  A fine-looking woman, Repington thought.  Black hair, large lustrous eyes.  She looked about twenty-five, and wore a full-length taupe dress whose fetchingly high collar was, for some reason, considered daring that season.  Maud’s chosen course took her close beside him, not so close as to make him step aside but close enough for him to note the blush high in her cheek and the sparkle in her eye.  He didn’t say anything; nobody did.  They watched the famous dancer make her dramatic exit.

As she passed Repington he tossed his head, a tiny movement with no other purpose than to catch her eye, but she sailed past with her face raised towards the sun.  She had such presence she could have walked half a mile without anyone daring to cough.  She passed beyond the striped marquee and as she continued to the house she didn’t look back.

Beside the lake, Lord Alfred Douglas had turned his back on the guests to stare out across the water.  His companions stood awkwardly beside him, and he seemed trapped there.  He couldn’t follow Maud to the house, couldn’t mingle with the guests, and if he strolled around the lake it would look as if he were trying to run away.  He said something, it didn’t matter what – and he remained at the water’s edge, his hands clasped behind his back, his feet apart, and he gazed across the ornamental lake like an admiral reviewing the fleet.  He stood firm by the water.  It was all he could do.

Repington knew the power of silence.  But when his lady friend spoke, it was as if everyone had, at that moment, received their cue.  Everyone began to chat.  His companion, Miss Lettice Fairfax, was a Gaiety Girl, though she looked as aristocratic as any woman there.  She was blonde, tall and thin.

‘Serves him right,’ she sniffed.  ‘Men think they can say anything because she’s on the stage.’

‘Attractive woman.’

Lettice shot him a glance.  ‘You’re with me.’

‘Have you seen her show?’

‘I leave that to men.’

He chuckled gently.  Colonel Charles à Court Repington went everywhere, knew everyone, but had not yet seen the Vision of Salome.  It played to packed audiences at London’s Palace Theatre, and Maud Allan was reputed to dance in little more than a skirt and veil – an artistic dance, her supporters insisted; a lewd and carnal display, claimed moral opponents.  Repington suspected he would find it neither: art and lewdness seldom sat well together.  He was a connoisseur of art – real art, he owned a Laszlo – and as a military man he knew where to look for lewdness.  Not the Palace Theatre.  Nor the Gaiety.

Lettice was whispering that Miss Allan was rumoured to be the king’s latest mistress – what had Repington heard?  Most of the guests knew that Maud had danced privately for the King the previous September – out of sight abroad, in Marienbad – and on that occasion she had danced naked, people said.  Repington wasn’t convinced.   People said she danced naked at the Palace Theatre too – but even in 1908 no one, no matter how famous, danced naked on the London stage.  As for the King’s mistress displaying her secret charms before the public – the idea was preposterous.  Nevertheless, he might buy a ticket.

Lettice asked him again.  ‘You know everyone,’ she pointed out.  ‘And he does have mistresses.’

‘Perhaps she was Lord Alfred’s mistress?’

She snorted.  Repington leant closer.  As he spoke in her ear, her blonde hair brushed his lips and for a moment he forgot the dark-haired and sensual dancer.  ‘Her quarrel with Bosie, I think, stems from the Academy.’  ‘Bosie’ was Lord Alfred’s nickname, given by Wilde and made public at the famous trial.  The Academy was a magazine Bosie edited, whose contributors ranged from Rupert Brooke and Sassoon to Colonel Repington himself.  ‘The Academy printed a review of Salome by Christopher St John.  Wasn’t too kind about Miss Allan.  Called her a hypnotist and mere imitator of Isodora Duncan.  Said she wasn’t original.  Shouldn’t think that went down well.’

Lettice tossed her hair.  ‘Not the first show to get a poor review – especially from that magazine.’

‘Threatened to sue.  Got a printed apology.’

‘Should have been enough.’

Repington wrapped his arm around his Gaiety dancer.  ‘You’re too easily satisfied, my little treasure – unlike the Salome Dancer.’

____________________

THE FIRST VEIL

The packed theatre was eager for her entrance.  With tickets in short supply and the possibility of artistic nudity, few people arrived late.  They milled in the foyers, took their seats, and dressed almost as finely as for the Opera.  The Palace auditorium was alive with hubbub and, as people chatted, they kept an eye on the thick red draped curtain.  Anticipation mounted.  Maud Allan might not dance nude – but if there was a moment (not that they’d come for that, oh no) if there was a moment when her veil slipped, it might be tonight.  Would there be any nudity?

Was it art?

While the audience settled, the small orchestra played an overture barely heard above the voices.  Nobody hushed until the lights dimmed.  Then came a pause in the darkness for several seconds, and the curtain opened on a simple set suggesting a woodland glade.  From the hidden orchestra came a familiar tune, and people who didn’t recall its name peered at their programmes to remind themselves that it was Felix Mendelssohn’s Spring Song.  The stage lighting was of dawn.  Into the copse of trees floated a ghost-like figure, a young girl classically draped in flowing white, with a garland of flowers in her hair.  Her thin muslin dress seemed insubstantial, barely attached to her slender body.  Scooped low at the front, it hung like a gossamer nightgown to her delicate ankles.  Not a Salome dress, not yet.  The simple shift was gauze: lit from the front it seemed opaque, but where the stage light faded and back-light shone through the flimsy material, it vanished to reveal what was inside.  At the edge of the glade the frontal lights were dim, to give a rising dawn effect behind.  Every time Maud floated to the front battens the drifting muslin hid her form.  Rear footlights shone through the material and although nothing indecent could be seen, her shape and girlish body appeared in smudgy silhouette, brief and tantalising.  This was the Spring Song, this was dawn.  Later that sultry evening, announced the printed programme, she would perform her Vision of Salome.

That sensuous dance, spawned and perfected in the theatres of Berlin and Vienna, was the talk of London: the success – or for some, the scandal of the season.  Maud Allan was not the only oriental dancer; in Vienna she had pitted her performances against both Ruth St Dennis with her Dance of the Sense of Touch, and Mata Hari, whose costumes showed more than Maud’s.  Each woman climaxed her show with routines gleaned from idealised portraits of Middle Eastern dancing girls; each wore a costume formed of diaphanous gauze over encrusted breastplates; each wore dangling beads and painted toenails and bare feet.  In foreign capitals Maud learned both to perfect her dances and outperform her competitors.  Mata Hari was more outrageous (as Maud took care not to tell her London public) but Maud’s dance was wilder, more abandoned.  Mata Hari showed her body, but Maud Allan bequeathed hers to the audience.  In Paris she debuted The Vision simultaneously with a celebrated performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome, and that made it difficult for anyone to call her dance decadent – as if anyone would in Paris, which saw itself as the sophisticated capital of Europe.

Maud was determined to be more than a mock Middle Eastern dancer.  She had extended her repertoire beyond Salome and spoke of her art as the pure spirit of dance, the liberation of the soul.  She was a classical dancer, not a burlesque, as classical as a ballerina – not that ballet dancers were thought respectable.  Though she’d had no formal training and was unconstrained by tradition, she had learned pageant, spectacle, and the drama of tramoya.

Hers was not the Salome of the bible – she was Herod’s daughter, yes, but a more seductive version.  People said she’d danced privately before King Edward and was his mistress.  Was she?  It was a delicious prospect, suggesting that tonight the audience might be privileged to gaze from their plush seats to see what the King saw in his bedchamber.  There she was, dancing in her nightdress – and this was only the opening number.  On the subtly lit stage they saw a woodland nymph who epitomised the feminine and vulnerable.  Far from brazen, this gentle girl seemed soft and artless, light and ethereal.  Her delicate, pensive movements were as if she’d never danced like this before, as if this was her first time, she was giving herself for the first time.  There had been no previous performances – not in the Palace Theatre, not in Paris, Vienna nor Berlin.  This was for you.

*

‘Women’s Sunday – June 21 – Cabinet Ministers Specially Invited’.  Mrs Drummond’s banner flapped from a steam launch on the Thames moored off the terrace of the House of Commons, and the day was bright and sunny.  Thousands of women who had come by train from all over the country to march on Hyde Park were watched by crowds lining the streets.  For the crowds it was an excellent day out, but for the women it was Britain’s biggest and most important suffrage demonstration.  Most wore white dresses trimmed with ribbon and sprays of flowers.  Guides and marshals had their own regalias of violet, white and green.  Placards and banners jostled.  The glamorous and hugely popular Christabel Pankhurst spoke from a wagon, but after the first few sentences her platform was rocked and shaken by groups of youths singing anti-suffrage songs.  Hundreds of police on special duty tried to stem the disorder, and although some of the less well known speakers were heard, Christabel and her mother were drowned out and buffeted  by gangs.  Fights began, and the planned climax to the day – a ‘Great Shout’ for suffrage – was lost in melees and confusion.  Christabel left surrounded by a police escort, Mrs Pankhurst disappeared, but thousands of suffrage supporters – by no means all women – remained in the park for a vast impromptu picnic.  Mothers and fathers and their children sat on the grass – and it was that picnic, said much of the press the following morning, that brought the day to a quietly impressive end.  Half a million people, they said, came to the park.

Some days later a deputation of women marched through cheering crowds from Caxton Hall to Parliament.  But at the Strangers’ Entrance Mrs Pankhurst was met by a policeman who said the Prime Minister wouldn’t see them.  He returned the letter she’d delivered.  Mr Asquith didn’t need to read it: he knew its demands and would be reminded of them in tomorrow’s papers.

That evening a small group of Suffragettes rallied outside the House and repeated their message with megaphones.  Police made thirty arrests.  Later, two Suffragettes were arrested for breaking windows at Number 10 Downing Street.  Mrs Pankhurst visited the police station and told the women they had done right.  The Press did not agree: letters and demonstrations were one thing, they said, but windows were government property.  In the newspapers the following day most reports spoke of broken glass.

__________________________

-2-

When Maud told the press she would attend the Olympic Games the response of the public was as if she were opening them afresh.  The first days had drawn disappointing crowds, for the Games weren’t seen as a world spectacle.  Created for the modern age in Greece in 1896, the Games had flopped since in both Paris and St Louis.  1908’s Games should have been in Rome, but in 1906 Italy had decided that she would not be able to mount them.  London was given twenty months to build a stadium and make all necessary arrangements to host a world event.  A 90,000 seat stadium was up and running inside two years.

But the organisers could not prevent the stormy July weather.  Rain and unseasonable cold kept crowds away.   The press was encouraged to hype the spectacle, advertising was increased, but only when a clutch of stage personalities, then the King and Queen, then the infamous Maud Allan promised to attend, did crowds emerge.  They had heard of these people, but not the athletes.  The King and Queen were a draw, but when Maud Allan – the scarlet princess – appeared, the crowds cheered as if the stadium had been erected especially for her.  When she entered the Royal Box with the Prime Minister’s wife, she waved to her largest audience.

*

And it was my audience – it really was.  I don’t pretend 90,000 sports-lovers came to see me, but I was the draw.  Because so far, the Games have not lit much of a fire, have they?  They’ve been a damp squib, like the weather.  But when folk heard that the PM’s wife and I would make guest appearances they came – oh, how they came – and they didn’t come to see Margot Asquith. She was a feature, but I topped the bill.

I’ve played some big theaters, some strange arenas, but this place, this vast oval arena – lit by daylight!  No drapes, no gauze, and there I am, a tiny dot in the Royal Box, beside several other tiny dots, and I’m dressed in a striking white Greekish number in homage, you might say, to the Peloponnesian Games in Olympia.  (See, I’ve read the program!)  At that moment, when I stepped forward to greet the crowd, I was a goddess, and I sensed Margot step back to let me accept the plaudits on my own.  How d’you like that?  The Prime Minister’s wife leaves me to greet the crowd as if I’d won a race myself.

‘Enjoy this moment,’ Margot murmured.  ‘It’s not often Life curtseys at your feet.’

I smiled – graciously, I guess.  She’s telling me to hold the moment?  I gazed down at the crowd and I knew I’d never forget.  Guardians of public decency might protest at my being in the Royal Box – but my shows sell out, and the Shepherd’s Bush stadium has sold out too.  90,000 people roaring approval.  What do I care for guardians of public decency?

Margot and I came to the Games in the back of an open-topped six-seater automobile – though, given the weather, the open top was a mistake.  While we acknowledged the onlookers, she and I were forced to hold on to our hats, even though we’d anchored them to our hair with jeweled hatpins.  To hell with the weather, brother – this was fun! 

‘Crowds love celebrity,’ Margot said.  ‘America didn’t realize.  That’s why your St Louis Games were such a flop.’

‘They should’ve invited me.’

‘America is such a new country.’  I don’t know why Margot bangs on about the States: she knows I’m Canadian.  ‘So brash, so sure of itself.  But I blame Christopher Columbus.  If I’d discovered America I’d have taken jolly good care not to tell anyone.’

I smiled.  She has this way with her.  Talks like she’s quoting from Oscar Wilde.  The air is blustery, but for an occasion like this I’d sit out in a squall.  This is my day, just as it’s been my season.  I’m making so much money.  Not only am I breaking records at the Palace Theater but I’m giving private performances, each of which earns me a lip-smacking two hundred and fifty pounds.  Though sometimes I’m canny enough to appear for free.  Today, for instance, I showed up at the Olympic Games for free, as I will later this month at the Veterans’ Fête at the Chelsea Royal Hospital – because let me tell you, that’s a high profile, high society affair, when the rich come out for charity.

I’ll enjoy that, let me tell you.  I’ve arrived.

*

Lieutenant Colonel Charles à Court Repington had not seen the famous dancer for several weeks, not since the garden party when she’d smacked Lord Alfred Douglas.  He’d missed seeing her at the Olympics, but at the bright and sunny Veteran’s Fête she gave a compelling turn and the aged Vets approved lustily, though the whole performance, Lettice Fairfax told him, had a touch of the second rate.  Didn’t he agree?  He smiled politely.  Dear Lettice – green with envy.  He watched Maud Allan.  She danced the Spring Song, Chopin’s Waltzes and Rubinstein’s Valse Caprice, but not Salome.  It was a charity gala – she wouldn’t give that for free.

She was magnificent, thought Repington, though he didn’t say so to Miss Fairfax.  On stage she seemed so vulnerable, so young.  At the garden party she’d looked young – mid-twenties perhaps – but on stage she looked nineteen.  She didn’t act nineteen – which was why women slated her, he thought.

‘Who’s the actress with her?’ Lettice asked.  This was afterwards, when the gala guests mingled with performers and Chelsea pensioners.  Maud was across the hall.

‘The “actress” with her,’ purred Charles Repington, ‘is the Prime Minister’s wife.’

‘She’s not even pretty.’

The Colonel whispered in her ear.  His words didn’t matter; attention mattered.  He was watching Maud and Margot.   Maud’s dark looks were compelling, whatever Lettice said, but Margot Asquith was striking in her way: tall, erect, with a Roman nose to enhance her beauty.  Intelligent, extravagant and flighty, an extraordinary match for the dry patrician Henry Asquith.  He had only that year become Prime Minister, but he had the gravitas of a man who might remain PM for years to come.

Even if he was a Liberal.

Margot, they said, led him a dance.  Younger, uncontrollable, doyen of society, she’d married the widowed Asquith before he achieved high office.  Perhaps he’d always been tipped for power.  Though did he have real power?  Henry was not here today and it was hard to imagine him beside lively Margot.  To Repington, Margot – Margot Tennant as she had been – wore power like a mink stole on her shoulders.  Families like hers were rulers.  Though they tolerated politicians their real interest lay in themselves.  And they had only a passing interest in the shining stars of stage and newspapers.  Paper stars.  Illuminated stars.

Repington was much the same.  He had a penchant for chorus girls, who he found easier than top stars, and more fun.  He liked the stage artistes’ free attitude to life – though he would never be foolish enough to marry an actress.  He had been married once – still was indeed, since Melloney refused to grant him a divorce – and he’d replaced her with a full-time mistress, against whom Lettice was an entr’acte.  It amused him to see high-born men fall for glamour and marry their heart-throbs.  Men sought excitement and the artistes sought security.

Lettice pulled his arm.  He made himself stop looking at Maud Allan and smiled instead at his blonde actress.  Actresses changed lovers as often as they changed shows.  New cast, new playmates.  He was temporary, he knew, but he was happy with that.  Lettice wanted him to introduce her to people who mattered, because he knew everybody.  He was handsome, well connected, and could smooth her passage into that world.

*

When the suffragettes were released from jail, they were met at the Holloway gates by a singing band of women who hustled their smiling heroines into a carriage bedecked with ribbons and suffrage slogans.  Their procession to the West End had been trailed in the morning papers and if the streets weren’t packed, there were still enough supporters at every kerbside to cheer and whistle strong encouragement.  The carriage was pulled by six white horses, but with so many Suffragettes inside, the poor horses struggled with their load and some women had to run to the rear and help push the wagon.  Men laughed and jeered but were out-shouted by shoppers, shopgirls and riotous children.  The carnival atmosphere helped convert spectators to the cause.  One was a fifteen-year-old, black-haired, vehement girl called Hannah Bolt.

_______________________

-3-

In October the Palace Theatre mounted the 250th performance of The Vision of Salome.  The house was full despite the swirling fog outside, a fog that threatened an early winter, and when the curtain rose on the first act / movement / display (no one quite knew what to call it) the chill outside seemed to permeate the stage – for Maud had opened with a melancholy dance of mourning.  Her famously hedonistic form was masked with grey draperies, the dim light was streaked with mist, and the shrunken body of the sensual dancer seemed weighted down with pain and loneliness.  Though the theatre was crowded, the air inside had not warmed, and latecomers kept their coats on until the first dance concluded.

Maud’s was not a long programme; she was a solo dancer, and her dances were interspersed with classical excerpts from the small scratch orchestra.  Parts of the programme could be thought boring, but everyone knew that the early part of the show, interesting as it might be to dance aficionados, was the build-up.  When the climactic dance began and Marcel Remy’s haunting music seeped into the auditorium, the curtain opened to reveal a young girl trembling at the edge of an Eastern garden, an unreal garden in pantomimic colours, decorated with jewel-like flowers and fringed with tall trees and Arabian obelisks.  The unreal light was moonlight – cold, like the night outside.  Maud was in her famous costume.  Beneath an open network of cord she wore nothing above the waist – nothing except two bold, provocative breastplates, emphasising what was cupped inside.  Chains of rattling beads and pearls swung from her hips.

Salome.

As Maud glided forward her feet scarcely seemed to move.  Her body swayed.  Then her body convulsed from an upright posture into a broken tableau vivant.  For two or three seconds she held what seemed an impossible pose like a fractured doll.  How could she stand like that?

She twitched, as if her frozen posture felt a jolt of heat.  Now she danced with such fluidity the air transported her; she seemed to drift in the clear waters of a pool.  Her flowing hands were weeds, her arms waves.  She transformed herself from moment to moment – now a water-nymph, now a cat; now a maiden, now a temptress.  King Herod’s favourite daughter became an animal aroused, a vampire.  She craved the blood of John the Baptist.  Those who knew the story knew that when the King ordered Salome to dance she demanded the prophet’s head as her reward, and Herod, besotted with lust for his wanton stepdaughter, could refuse her nothing – what was a prisoner’s head?  Only as Salome danced would Herod realise that she too was besotted – but not with him.  John had refused Salome in life, so she would have him when he died.  Herod ordered John to be executed, and the frenzied Salome dedicated her Dance of the Veils not to Herod but to the freshly slaughtered Baptist.  As the tempo of her dance increased, her grief exploded into reckless concupiscence and she demanded her gory prize: ‘Bring me the head of John the Baptist.’

Maud’s dance followed the sweep of Oscar Wilde’s play.  First the crazed girl displayed her thwarted lust, then she snatched up and flaunted the severed head of the prophet who would not love her.  ‘I will bite thy lips,’ she said in Wilde’s play.  ‘I have kissed thy mouth.’ 

It was the vampiric climax to her dance.  Salome saw the head lying centre stage, she rushed across, seized and bore it front-stage, so the footlights glittered on dark blood.  Then she collapsed, holding the head in her hands while she writhed in ecstasy and passion.  In kissing her lover’s head she had become a tortured maenad.  The curtain fell.

Nothing could follow.  There could only be applause.  When the curtain rose, Maud curtseyed sweetly and seemed demure, a modest young girl.  But she was still dressed in that amazing costume, and the curtain calls were the last chance for the audience to gaze on the flesh-revealing net, the gossamer, the chains of beads and skimpy undies.  Between her outrageous breastplates lay a skin of almost invisible gold mesh.  The plates themselves were studded with virginal white pearls.

To keep her on stage the men kept cheering.

This 250th performance coincided with the publication of Maud’s autobiography, an enjoyable but freely fictionalised story – prompting Punch to ask wryly if the book would be issued naked, without a jacket.  An equally fictional book – a mere 36 pages, called, without irony, Maud Allan and her Art – was slapped together by soft-porn author Frank Harris (he whose My Life And Loves would keep generations of schoolboys awake at night for the next few decades).  Edwardians had a craze for picture postcards, and pictures of Maud flooded the mail, joining and for a while eclipsing hundreds of thousands of snaps of chorus girls and actresses in unlikely garb.  Few could match Miss Maud Allan.  Practically every postcard featured her Salome costume; she was seen full-length, in profile, head and shoulders, with and without the Baptist’s head, almost always in her eye-catching costume.  In photographs, she wore less than she wore on stage.  Between the small pearl-studded breastplates she showed bare cleavage and her upper chest was exposed, though when she performed on stage she secured the wobbling breastplates with a strong mesh strap.  In her most provocative photographs she faced the camera full-on to present the notorious cleavage; her cool, sexual stare challenged, and her lustrous eyes flaunted the secret freedoms of a new century.  For one brief summer season Maud was more famous than the Queen.

*

Hannah Bolt’s brother gave her a postcard.  Salome was famous but not obscene, and although the cards could be bought in most stationers’ shops Hannah hid the card in her own private drawer.  She was lucky to have a private drawer; most of her friends had shared bedrooms but Daniel and Hannah, fifteen years old, were too old to share and had the luxury of living in a rambling terraced house off Garrat Lane in Wandsworth, near the mental hospital.  The house was above and at times part of the shop below – their parents’ Dress Agency, or as it was known in the area, the second-hand clothes shop.  Second-hand clothes were displayed on the ground floor, with surplus stock crammed into another room at the rear.  When supplies outstripped demand, as they often did in that desperate trade, bales of clothes were dragged upstairs and dumped in corners of the living quarters.  They lined the halls.  Though untidy and often grubby, the clothes were the family’s source of income, and neither Hannah, Daniel nor their parents resented their presence.  Those clothes, money to come, were reassurance.  They had always been around the house, and when Hannah and Daniel were young they used the clothes as an inexhaustible resource for play.

Now, fifteen years old, Hannah was dressing up again.  A Sunday luxury.  Daniel was out.  Hannah had their friend Eileen in the house and the two girls, inspired by the postcard, had taken a pile of suitable-looking clothes into her bedroom to create costumes which would help them imitate Salome.  Knowing they were alone, they had slipped off their outer clothes and replaced them with lace curtain skirts and, in lieu of better, some hand-made paper breastplates.  They laughed at each other and danced in clumsy imitation of the way they imagined Maud Allan might dance.  They had no music.  The only gramophone, large and heavy with a metal horn, lived downstairs, and in those days it did not occur to anyone that they should have music in their bedrooms.  Hannah and Eileen tra-la-la’d a vaguely Arabian melody.

Eileen giggled.  ‘Daniel might walk in.’

When Hannah said he was out Eileen hid her disappointment.  She thought Daniel rather nice.  It was odd that he and Hannah were twins, but he was a boy and she a girl and they were not really identical, so there wasn’t a problem telling them apart, but it was odd.  Their faces were similar and they laughed the same and had expressions so alike that it was strange to see Daniel’s grin on Hannah’s face. 

Eileen was used to Hannah’s house.  Despite the clothes stacked all around and despite the shabby shop, Eileen suspected it was more prosperous than it looked.  Hannah was Jewish, and clearly Bolt’s Dress Agency earned enough to support this large old house.  It was crammed with stuff, even if most was for sale, and was enormous compared to the hideous pair of rooms she shared with her own mother.  Eileen hated her mother’s place.  She never invited friends there.  She was ashamed of those two rooms, her mother, their lack of money, their lack of class, and she looked up to Hannah Bolt who, to Eileen, was middle class.  She had known Hannah less than a year and was determined they would always be best friends.

‘D’you think it’s true about Miss Allan?’ Eileen asked.  They were still dancing, each taking turns to improvise the wailing melody.  Though they wore little, the dancing kept them warm.   ‘People say that in the real shows she’s not like the photos – she’s naked above the waist.’

‘Not down below?’

Eileen hooted.  ‘I bet she was naked for the King.’

Hannah’s eyes blazed.  She pulled off her flimsy paper shields and danced topless – wild and clumsy in her movements.  ‘Like this, you mean?’

Eileen giggled, shocked at her friend’s forwardness.  It was all right to talk about it, but ... she thought she was the forward one.  And here was Hannah – my gosh.  Eileen hadn’t seen another girl’s breasts before – but Hannah didn’t seem to care.  Hannah was dark with olive skin, which must be why her nipples looked darker than Eileen’s own.  Dark red, almost brown.  Perhaps they were Jewish nipples.  Hannah kept dancing.  She was Jewish-looking, when Eileen thought about it, though she hadn’t realised till Hannah told her.  That meant Daniel was Jewish too.  Hannah looked fiercer than her brother, but they both had lovely smiles.

‘Come on, Salome,’ Hannah cried.  She skipped closer and pulled at Eileen’s breastplates.  Being paper they tore immediately.  Eileen instinctively clasped her hands across her chest, but felt silly and after a slight hesitation followed Hannah in the dance.

‘Hope no one comes in.’

But Hannah wore a dare-devil grin – just like her brother: Eileen still found that strange.  She was moving closer.  ‘Let’s waltz,’ Hannah purred.

Before Eileen realised what she meant, Hannah had taken her by the arms and pulled her closer still.  The two girls rubbed together, chest to chest – only for a moment, till Eileen stepped away.  ‘Gosh.  It doesn’t seem ... ‘

Hannah laughed at her.  Hannah raised her hands and placed them on her head, like Salome in the photograph.  She took a step forward, but Eileen moved away.  Hannah stayed where she was.  She stood with her feet apart, swaying from the waist.  ‘That’s what it must feel like, with a man.  You know, flesh to flesh.’

Eileen wasn’t sure where to look.  ‘Oh, I know all that.’

Hannah grinned.  She didn’t believe her.  Well, she wouldn’t believe her, Eileen realised, it was a stupid thing to say: she was only sixteen; Hannah was fifteen.  How could she know?

Suddenly Hannah seemed bored.  She stopped dancing and flung herself on the narrow bed.  ‘Come and sit by me.’  Eileen didn’t move.  ‘Come on, Eileen, tell me – have you ever, you know, with a boy?’

‘No,’ she cried, embarrassed.  It was hardly surprising: they had almost nothing on.  And they were talking about boys.  But she was older than Hannah and she wasn’t a prude by any means.  ‘I don’t have a brother.  You’re lucky.’  Hannah raised an eyebrow.  Eileen blustered on: ‘Have you ever ... tried anything with him?’

‘Tried anything?’

‘Well.  I mean, danced or something?’

‘Daniel?’  Hannah laughed.  She was half lying, half sitting on the bed, as if fully dressed.  ‘I love Daniel, of course, but I’m not interested in him.  Anyway, he’s too young.’

‘He’s your age.’

‘Obviously.  But boys don’t know anything, do they?’

Eileen would rather have slipped her blouse back on, but she couldn’t, not while Hannah was lounging on the bed like a whatever-you-call-it in a harem.  ‘Some boys know things.’

‘Oh?  Do tell.’

Eileen’s fingers strayed to cover her breast but she made herself pull her hand away.  ‘Have you ever, you know, kissed a man?’

‘A man?’

‘A boy, then – anyone?’

Hannah paused a moment.  ‘I haven’t wanted to, really.  How about you?’

Eileen tried to look mature.  She was the older girl.  She had a job; she worked in an office, while Hannah just helped in her parents’ shop.  Yet Hannah seemed to know things.  ‘Well, you know.’

‘Show me.’

‘Show you?’

‘How it’s done.’  Hannah smiled.  She had lost her fierce look.  ‘Girls have to practice.  And it’s better to practice on another girl.’

Eileen was nervous.  ‘Safer, I’ll give you that.’

‘So kiss me.’  Hannah held her gaze. 

‘No!’

‘We’ll kiss each other.  No one will know.’

Eileen frowned, realising she had lost control to the younger girl.  ‘You’re scared,’ said Hannah, smiling at Eileen in such an oddly superior way that Eileen felt she had to show she wasn’t completely outclassed.  She dropped her head and kissed Hannah quickly on the lips, then pulled back.  Hannah watched from the bed.  ‘Is that all there is?’

‘Well.’  Eileen stood erect.  ‘If you give a boy more than that he’ll think ...  Anything could happen.’

Hannah nodded.  ‘You could get pregnant.’  Eileen blushed.  ‘That’s the word for it,’ said Hannah airily.  ‘But you can’t get pregnant from me!’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Get pregnant – or kiss me?’  Hannah shrugged, then looked away.  ‘You’re scared, aren’t you?  But you have to practice some time.’

‘So you say.’

‘Because it’s true.’   Hannah waited till Eileen sat on the bed.  They faced each other.  Eileen was trembling, acutely aware of Hannah’s nakedness, of her own nakedness.  ‘It is cold,’ Hannah agreed.  When she opened her arms her breasts moved.  Gosh, like muscles, Eileen thought.  Hannah reached towards her.  ‘Come and get warm.’

Eileen had her pride.  She wasn’t a schoolgirl; she shouldn’t act like a schoolgirl on the bed.  She eased forward slightly – and as she moved she realised that, of all things, she was aroused.  Only a little.  Just the two of them.  Nothing could happen, could it?  It was only practice.

In the silent room she heard a child’s voice calling in the street.  Then the outside was swept away.  Hannah took her arms and pulled her forward.  From her awkward position Eileen half lost her balance and slipped slightly and her nipples brushed against Hannah’s breast and Hannah clasped her in a tight embrace.  Eileen gasped and flushed.  She was aflame with – what? – nervousness.  Fear.  Embarrassment. 

Hannah’s kiss was a long slow lingering kiss.  Hannah kissed as if she’d kissed before, as if she really wanted to kiss Eileen, as if she’d never stop.  Her tongue was inside Eileen’s mouth.  The feeling was extraordinary.  Not horrible, it was almost ...

Eileen broke away.  ‘You don’t need to practice,’ she said.