And so it might have ended, had Harold not complained about having sardines on toast for his tea two days running. It put her in a bad mood, and she told him he was jolly lucky to get any tea at all, considering she’d only just got back from a reshowing of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. What did he expect? she hurled at him.
“What I expect,” Harold said pathetically, “is a wife who doesn’t have Rudolph Valentino tucked up in our spare room.”
“Oh, Harold.” Ruby was mortified at this unfair criticism. “You can’t deny me that. Here I am every day all alone.”
The spare room was her temple — or, rather, her tent, her Room of Araby. It was swathed in yards and yards of white sheeting and curtain net from Woolwich Market, and below it was a divan with a pillow and cover almost exactly like in the film. From the walls Rudolph gazed down at her in adoration as the Sheik, the Young Rajah, Monsieur Beaucaire (holding a lute in a way which Gladys said looked so naughty), and as Julio, the sultry tango dancer. Words from the films adorned each wall, painstakingly typed out on their old typewriter, together with the sheet music of “The Sheik of Araby,” which she thumped out on the piano wistfully when Harold was away. (He said it disturbed his digestion.)
“I don’t know why you do it,” he said, perplexed.
“I just like him.”
“He looks like a pouf.”
“A what?”
Harold reddened. “Never you mind.”
“I won’t have you being rude about Rudolph. You’re just jealous.”
“I’m not,” Harold cried defiantly.
“Oh, Harold.” Ruby relented, sighing deeply. “If only you were more masterful.”
Ruby was never quite sure what had made her take the final step in providing herself with her own sheihk. She thought it was probably the waste.
As she looked round her Room of Araby the day after that conversation with Harold, it occurred to her that her body was crying out for the intimate attentions of a sheik. Unfortunately Rudolph himself was far away and could not be counted upon for this task. He would never realise how desperately she needed him. She was forced to face the fact that meeting his eyes across the crowd was the nearest she would ever get to him. And Harold wasn’t sufficient replacement. When he rolled over, just grunting, “Goodnight, old girl,” she was left with a feeling that life must have more to offer her.
She slept alone in the Room of Araby when he was away on his travels, imagining her sheik by her side, and those eyes staring down at her. Longingly, desirously. In her heart, she was Lady Diana Mayo from the film, not Ruby Smart, and at last she had decided she could wait no longer.
Cyril Tucker, or Rudolph as he was to her, had proved to be everything Gladys had said and more. It was a little hard the first time. As he took off that awful cap, she saw immediately that the sleeked-down dark hair was a considerable improvement. And those sideboards! She had self-consciously led the way upstairs, wondering if her stocking tops were showing under the scallops of her short skirt and trying to pull it down in case. Once his apron, waistcoat, shirt, and vest went, magic had taken the place of doubts as to the wisdom of this venture. His manly chest flexed magnificently as he strode meaningfully towards her.
Ecstatically, she had swooned in his arms, then felt herself lifted high in the air, then tossed mercilessly onto the divan. Her body ached for him, but she trembled with delicious fear, as had Lady Diana Mayo.
“Why have you brought me here?” she uttered the famous words.
Her eyes closed, then flew open again, so as not to miss a moment of this rapture. Slowly, silently, menacingly, he bent over her, eyes fixed desirously upon her person.
“Are you not woman enough to know?” he grated on cue. Then his hands removed the white jumper Mum had knitted her last Christmas, he patted her feet, just as Rudolph had in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, then slowly and sensuously drew off Harold’s best artificial silk stockings from her legs and invitingly stroked Lady Diana’s camiknickers.
“Oh, Rudolph,” she sighed, happy at last as she lay back to accept her fate.
It had become a regular fixture. Gladys had already bagged Friday lunchtime, and even Rudolph could not manage more than one Lady Diana a morning, so it was arranged that Tuesday afternoon after he finished his rounds would be a very nice time to call.
When, at the beginning of August, 1926, Harold announced he had to go to York, up north somewhere, for four weeks, Saturday afternoon was temporarily added to the itinerary. After all, she had several weeks to pass before the London release of Son of the Sheik, and needed something to take her mind off the long hours of waiting.
Ruby looked up with red-rimmed eyes as Gladys came through the back door. She, too, was clad all in black. They had been in mourning for several days now. It was lucky Harold was still away up north or he’d have kicked up such a fuss. Frank never said a word, according to Gladys. He understood. Frank always did, not like Harold, Ruby thought enviously. How could anyone not share their grief? Rudolph was dead. Gladys’s and her lives were over. Romance had ended. There would be no more films after Son of the Sheik.
The tragedy had come out of the blue. First came the shock that Rudolph was ill and had to have an operation for gastric ulcer and appendicitis. Then the relief when it was successful and he was said to be recuperating well. Then came the terrible news that he was dead. It was unbelievable. How could they let him die? Each morning she seized the newspaper to read every tiny detail. She realised that she was not alone in her loss. Women, and men, too, had flocked to Campbell’s Funeral Parlor on Broadway, and mounted police had to be called in to prevent the crowds storming the parlor in their grief. Inside lay his — oh, she could hardly bear to read it — poor body in a bronze coffin, his beautiful face and shoulders exposed.
“Look, Ruby!” Gladys sniffled, thrusting yet another newspaper under Ruby’s nose. “Isn’t that Harold?”
“Harold? Glad, don’t make jokes at a time like this.” Ruby glanced at the photograph of the queue waiting to enter the funeral parlour. And, yes, it did indeed look rather like Harold in the queue. But how could it be? She supposed that could have been his Homburg hat, and that certainly resembled his samples case of ladies’ stockings. Nevertheless Ruby was quite sure it could not have been Harold.
“He’s up north somewhere, so it can’t be.”
“Looks like him, Rube.” They agreed it was queer but they had a more pressing problem to consider: Cyril. Was it, or was it not, morally right to continue with Cyril’s services, when Rudolph himself was dead?
Gladys was in no doubt that it was. After all, she explained: “It’s like his spirit come to bless us, isn’t it?”
Ruby found that very consoling. Even so, she thought it right to wear a black armband when she saw Cyril on Saturday, and insisted on keeping it on after he had ripped all her clothes off, even her rubber corsets, and had her shivering helplessly before him. Cyril had sniggered when he saw it, and she reproved him.
“Don’t laugh, please.” Sometimes it occurred to her that Cyril was a little common.
“Whatever you say, Ruby. You’re the boss.”
“No, you are, Rudolph.”
Cyril had belatedly remembered his role, picked her up and thrown her on the divan most satisfactorily. (On one terrible occasion he had missed and it had been most painful.) His eyes smouldered and if only she could ignore his flashy new combinations, the illusion would be complete. What did he think she had provided all the proper costumes for? She had given him Don Alonzo’s gaucho hat, his matador’s jacket, Monsieur Beaucaire’s wig, his sheik’s turban complete with tassel, and the Young Rajah outfit. Finally, the offending combinations were removed.