After the Last Dance

by Sarra Manning

  Those girls all had flashlights they shone on their ankles every time a man in uniform passed. They did things in doorways with soldiers too. Even though the doorways were in shadow, the noises from the couples, a hint of a bare leg braced, made Rose hurry past, eyes averted, and on the evening she saw two girls fall to the ground kicking, spitting and hair-pulling as they fought over the attentions of a skinny GI with a huge nose and buck teeth, she’d wondered if maybe one glorious night in Rainbow Corner was all she was ever meant to have.

  Rose had even gone all the way back to King’s Cross to see if she could find a GI at the source, but the ones she shyly approached either weren’t going to Rainbow Corner or got completely the wrong idea about her. One of them had suddenly produced a nylon stocking like a magician pulling scarves out of a seemingly empty pocket. ‘You want the other one, honey, then why don’t you and me take a little walk?’

  But at least there were still places, lots of them, where she could dance. Rose had become quite adept at jiving under the tutelage of the men she danced with at the Paramount or at Frisco’s when she ventured back to Piccadilly. She’d also got awfully good at fending off advances from spotty young men who told her they were going off to fight for her. It was no wonder that she preferred to dance with negroes.

  The negroes that Rose danced with all called her ‘ma’am’ and when they weren’t dipping and twirling her – and on one glorious occasion actually lifting her over a pomaded head – would only touch her elbow to guide Rose off a sprung dancefloor, which sagged and groaned with the weight of all the spinning couples.

  Tonight, with Kathy, who worked in the tobacconist’s two doors down from the café, Rose was going to the Bouillabaisse Club in New Compton Street. ‘They play jazz all night,’ Kathy told Rose as they queued to get in. ‘Do you love jazz? I do.’

  ‘It’s my most absolute favourite thing in the world,’ Rose assured her, though she didn’t really care what they played as long as the music had a beat that she could dance to. Soon she was in the arms of a strapping Jamaican called Cuthbert.

  When she was dancing, the horrors of Rose’s new life – the hunger, the what-was-to-become-of-her, and the fear of being dragged back to her old life and the terrible retribution that awaited – all receded.

  Her feet stopped hurting and did all sorts of tricksy, quicksilver things that she didn’t know they could do and Cuthbert had gleaming white teeth and told her that she was pretty as he spun her round again and again. Shirley’s pale blue taffeta dress was growing limper by the day.

  After an hour of dancing, Cuthbert said he’d ‘be happy to procure the finest ginger beer money can buy’ while Rose went to the Ladies’ to do something with her hair.

  The tiny cloakroom was heaving with girls either queuing for the one lavatory or fighting for space in front of a mirror. Rose got trapped between two girls debating the merits of gravy browning versus cold tea as make-do stockings ‘if you can’t find a Yank’.

  ‘I’d rather use gravy browning than get a pair of nylons off a Yank and a dose of the clap,’ one of the girls muttered darkly. Rose tried not to look shocked. She was a doctor’s daughter, after all. There’d been two books in her father’s study that were kept locked in his desk drawer, but he always put the key in his brass pen tidy and when he was at one of his Rotary Club or Freemason’s meetings, Mother always went to bed early, so Rose wasn’t entirely ignorant of the ways of flesh. Still, there were things one simply didn’t say in public.

  She gave both of them a wide berth until they vacated the space in front of the mirror. Her poker-straight hair was, as usual, escaping from the four pins that were all she had left. It was no less manageable for being washed under the cold tap because Mrs Cannon charged an extra shilling a week for access to barely lukewarm water for an hour every day.

  Rose patted down her red cheeks and her sweaty forehead with powder from the gilt and paste compact Shirley had given her for her sixteenth birthday even though Mother had said she was too young and that the compact looked common. She was still flushed and glowing and there were damp patches on the pale blue taffeta from where she’d —

  ‘I say, could I possibly beg just a smidge of your lippy?’

  Rose looked up to see a girl standing behind her. She had china-blue eyes in a pretty doll-like face and hair like Jean Harlow, which Rose was sure was bleached. Women who bleached their hair were also common, but this girl certainly didn’t sound like the brassy girls who came into the café or regularly blocked Rose’s view of the mirror in the dancehalls of London.

  When Rose tentatively smiled at her, she smiled back. ‘Be my guest,’ Rose said and she handed over her precious tube of Max Factor Tru-Color in pillar-box red. As soon as she gave it to the other girl, Rose wanted to snatch it back. Instead she watched anxiously as it was sparingly applied to a mouth that would be described in a novel as bee-stung.

  ‘You’re an angel.’ The girl pressed her lips together to spread the colour. ‘So, what did you do to get a tube of Max Factor?’

  ‘What did I do? Oh! Well, nothing really. My friend Patience, her sister Prudence works in a munitions factory. All the girls were given a tube as a thank-you for doing their bit but Prudence has religious objections to wearing make-up and their parents said Patience was too young, so they gave it to me.’

  ‘What rot. I can’t imagine God caring whether a girl wears a little powder and paint. Surely He has more important things to worry about.’

  Rose nodded. ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you?’

  They smiled at each other again. ‘It’s awfully hard having a conversation with someone’s reflection,’ the other girl said, ‘and we’re creating a terrible bottleneck.’

  ‘How annoying!’ Rose shoved comb, compact and lipstick back in her handbag and turned away from the mirror to follow the girl out into the little antechamber that led back into the club. ‘I’m Rose, by the way.’

  ‘Sylvia!’ It was a shriek, as a burly man in sailor’s uniform had come up behind Sylvia and lifted her off her feet. ‘Lovely to meet you. Thanks for the lippy!’ Her words were swallowed up as she was carried off.

  Cuthbert was waiting patiently for Rose by the bar with the promised ginger beer and as soon as she’d gulped it down, she was back in his arms.

  They only had time for one fast jive before Sylvia tapped Cuthbert on the shoulder. ‘Mind if I cut in?’ she shouted, her arms already around Rose’s waist. ‘We need another girl to make up the numbers.’

  ‘Make sure you bring my Rosie back in one piece,’ Cuthbert said but he was already eyeing the girls lining the edge of the dancefloor, shifting their weight from foot to foot as they looked for a spare man. Rose didn’t think that Cuthbert would wait for her again.

  ‘Not sure if you needed rescuing but I’ve got a GI, six foot four inches, who’s getting a crick in his neck from having to dance with so many short girls. Also some of the girls here are funny about dancing with a negro.’

  Kathy had been funny about dancing with negroes. She’d said none of them washed properly, which wasn’t true, because every one that Rose had danced with had been immaculately turned out, but Kathy had disappeared with a gum-chewing lance corporal within five minutes of them arriving, which had left Rose free to dance with whomever she chose.

  Now she was introduced to a grinning, debonair GI called Ray, who kissed her hand, told her she looked like Hedy Lamarr, asked if she could jive then pulled her onto the dancefloor where he lifted Rose up as if she was as light as thistledown and swung her over his head. She just had time and the presence of mind to tuck her legs in so she didn’t kick his ears.

  By the time the band decided to take a break, the bodice of the pale blue taffeta was soaked through, the ends of Rose’s hair sopping wet. It was so hot and humid in the tiny club that condensation dripped from the ceiling and most of the soldiers had removed their jackets. The place reeked of mildew and sweat.

  ‘Over here!’ Sylvia waved frantically from
a far corner. ‘Rose! Ray!’

  She let Ray lead her through the mass of resting dancers; girls with their hands on their knees as they tried to catch their breath, men mopping at their foreheads with handkerchiefs.

  ‘Billy got you a drink,’ Sylvia said to Rose as soon as they reached her table. Rose didn’t know who Billy was and the glass thrust at her contained a lukewarm liquid that tasted even viler than the Coca-Cola she’d had at Rainbow Corner. ‘Gin and French. Divine, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, it’s my absolute favourite,’ Rose said. She let Ray light a cigarette for her and find her a chair and it wasn’t until she was sitting down and taking cautious sips of her drink and hesitant puffs of her cigarette that she noticed the other two girls. One was blonde, though not as blonde as Sylvia, and had a jutting bosom displayed in all its glory in an emerald satin frock and the other one was thinner, darker; she was dressed all in black and looked terribly chic.

  ‘Phyllis.’ Sylvia gestured at the blonde, then at the dark-haired girl. ‘Maggie. This is Rose. She let me have a dab of lipstick and she knows how to jive.’

  Rose resisted the urge to wriggle her shoulders as Phyllis and Maggie looked her over. ‘It’s very nice to meet you,’ she said.

  ‘How old are you?’ Maggie said. Rose thought she had an accent but it was hard to know for certain as the band had started playing again.

  ‘I’m nineteen.’

  Maggie looked at Rose’s sweat-stained dress, the hair that had once again broken free of its moorings and didn’t say anything, but glanced at Phyllis, her eyebrows raised.

  ‘So have you decided what you’ll do when you get drafted next year?’ Phyllis asked. Rose hadn’t because she was still three years off twenty, and the war couldn’t last another three years, though often it seemed as if it would last for ever.

  ‘Anything but the Land Girls,’ she said fervently but she didn’t want them to think that the only thing she was doing for the war effort was dancing with soldiers on leave. ‘I’ve only been in London for a few weeks but now I’ve settled in, I’m looking for some volunteer work.’ Phyllis and Maggie still had pursed lips, which wasn’t very encouraging. ‘Olive, the girl I room with, spends three nights on duty as a roof spotter. She says it was quiet for ages, but it’s got quite lively recently.’

  In Durham, the bombing had become so sporadic that Rose’s father even stored his bicycle in their air raid shelter, which would have been unthinkable two years ago. But in the few weeks that she’d been in London, Rose had got used to the whine of the siren again and having to feel her way down three flights of stairs in the dark to the damp cellar. She still wasn’t used to the terrifying crackle and pop of the anti-aircraft guns, though, or seeing the sky lit up so brightly. Not just from the city blazing with fire from the bombs that rained down, but from the ghostly glowing beams of the searchlights picking out the German planes.

  There was something to be said for spending most of her nights in dimly lit basements where the band and the thud of feet drowned out the sound of the world outside. Most times, when they let off the sirens, they were a distant wail and everyone carried on dancing.

  But that wasn’t important now, when Phyllis was glaring at her as if she’d confessed to something awful like having a secret Nazi lover or trading on the black market. Maggie wasn’t looking too thrilled either and Sylvia wasn’t any help as she had her back to the three of them while she talked to two airmen. ‘Have I said something to offend you?’ Rose asked timidly.

  ‘No, of course you haven’t,’ Phyllis said but her massive bosom heaved. ‘Though if London isn’t lively enough for you then it’s a pity you weren’t here a couple of years back. Then it was very lively, let me tell you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.’

  Maggie picked up her glass, almost took a sip from it, and then put it down on the slick-wet table with some force. ‘Have you any idea of what… everyone I know… everyone lost someone during the Blitz.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ She was sorry from the absolute bottom of her heart, but even so Rose had noticed that Londoners had a tendency to go on and on about the Blitz as if not a single bomb had dropped anywhere else. As if no one else had ever experienced what it was like to suddenly have people gone, like Janet and Susan from her class at school and Timothy McFarlane who’d once taken Shirley to the fair and had been killed on his first RAF mission, but it was very hard to explain that to these two imperious girls who thought they had the monopoly on loss just because they lived in London. It was far better to apologise again, make her excuses, then leave. ‘So, I take it you two don’t volunteer, then?’

  Or she could stay and dig herself in even deeper.

  This time the look that Phyllis and Maggie shared was less sceptical, more smug. ‘We do volunteer,’ Phyllis said. ‘For the American Red Cross.’

  ‘But we’re entitled to a night off,’ Maggie added and though Rose’s hair was sodden and heavy, Rose fancied that it was suddenly standing on end.

  ‘Oh.’ She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but that one syllable was so high-pitched, it rivalled any note that the band’s saxophonist had played that night. ‘At Rainbow Corner?’

  They nodded. Sylvia, who’d caught the last part of the conversation, leaned over Phyllis’s shoulder. ‘I sometimes think we should pay them for the privilege of volunteering. It’s such fun, everyone is so nice and the perks… I have bars of chocolate and packets of cigarettes coming out of my ears.’

  ‘Do shut up, Sylv. Loose lips and all that,’ Phyllis said, reaching behind to dig Sylvia in the ribs. ‘Not that we accept any of the perks.’

  Rose didn’t care whether they did or not. ‘You volunteer at Rainbow Corner? That’s an actual thing that one could do?’

  ‘Only if one was over eighteen,’ Maggie told her. ‘Anyway, there’s a waiting list. It’s very long. There’s also a list of girls who are never allowed through the door.’

  She made it sound as if she was going to personally make sure that Rose’s name was added to the blacklist just because she had the audacity not to have been in London for the Blitz. Maggie and Phyllis were utterly objectionable and though Sylvia seemed friendly enough, Rose wasn’t sure she could trust someone who was pally with such rude girls.

  ‘Oh, look! There’s Cordelia! I haven’t seen her in ages !’ Sylvia was suddenly gone and Rose sat there with Phyllis and Maggie, who ignored her for a good two minutes until Cuthbert thankfully reappeared and asked if he could have the pleasure of the next dance.

  6

  It could have been any one of a multitude of different agonies which forced Jane out of sleep.

  She was face down, her head wedged at an uncomfortable angle because she was still wearing her tiara, which now felt like an instrument of torture. She still had her clothes on. Her wedding dress… she paused to remember why she was still wearing her wedding dress, and as she recalled all the horrors and indignities of the last twenty-four hours, Jane wished she were still comatose. All of her was sore; from her feet, which ached from too much walking in limo shoes, to her head, which felt like it had pincers crushing her skull, and all points in between. Especially in between.

  Fuck me into the mattress.

  Leo had taken her at her word. Fucked her long enough for Jane to realise that despite all the foreplay, all the build-up, she wasn’t going to come. It didn’t seem like he was going to come either, not even after she’d faked an orgasm. Two orgasms! Then at last he’d come and Jane had pretended to fall asleep while he crashed around their suite doing God knows what.

  He was asleep now. Jane sat up very slowly, very carefully, biting her lip because simply sitting up made her clasp her hands to her head to make it stop pounding.

  Leo was sprawled next to her, paunchy and pale in his boxer shorts, mouth hanging open, which would explain why he was making that horrendous noise, like a waterlogged machine gun firing rounds. He hadn’t looked like that last night. Or maybe her p
ique and all that champagne had clouded her judgement.

  Jane stood up on wobbly legs, grabbed her phone out of her bag and crept towards the bathroom. She avoided the mirror, sat down on the edge of the tub and stretched out her left hand. The diamonds on her ring glittered, but she no longer took pleasure in them.

  When the engagement was as new and shiny as the ring and she’d realised that she’d pulled it off, that her disco days were over, Jane would recite the ring’s credentials like poetry. It was poetry. Art deco, Asscher-cut 6.10-carat diamond, flanked by two baguette diamonds and fourteen round-cut diamonds with a combined weight of 4.44 carats in a claw setting on a platinum shank. Ker-fucking-ching, darling.

  It was her reward for all the time she’d spent searching for that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. All the different men she’d tried on for size. The three years spent reeling Andrew in, very slowly, very subtly, so that he always thought he was the one doing all the reeling.